


Abide with Me

by waketosleep



Series: Author's Favourites [9]
Category: Merlin - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Community: reel_merlin, Horror, M/M, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-07
Updated: 2010-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-10 10:43:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An aggressive blood disease epidemic wipes out Britain. Twenty-eight days later, four of the last survivors in London must try to make it out alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Abide with Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for reel_merlin's 2009 challenge, with _28 Days Later_ as my movie prompt.

It was quiet. Quiet and sort of cold.

He opened his eyes.

Green walls and monitors and a bed with rails—he was in a hospital room. And nothing was working. Not the monitors, not the lights. Not the heat, apparently. He hauled himself upright and found that there were tubes in his arms; he ripped them out and watched blood well up and trickle across his skin to drip on the sheets. He felt a little bit winded just from sitting up, and took a moment to lick the blood from his wrist before swinging his feet over the edge of the bed and standing up. He was wearing one of those horrible hospital gowns and the cool air hit his bare ass like a slap. His knees shook a little but he hung onto the rail and made it to the end of the bed without incident. There was a chart and he grabbed at it, blinking grit from his eyes to read and look for answers.

His name. Admitted September 2008. Some medical gibberish. Attending physician, Dr. G. Baltar. A head wound? He reached up gingerly. The left side of his head was fine, if a bit shaggy and bed-mussed; the right felt fuzzy, like it had been shaved (and of course his hair hadn't looked silly enough before, had it). Finally his fingers found the scar. A bumpy ridge. Healed. Panic welled up in his chest and he clutched at his head; this was worse than waking up after a night out, with no idea where he was or how he'd got there or who he'd woken up next to. His memories ended on the day he'd been admitted, that morning, when he'd been running a package for one of his regular clients. There had been the car that had run the light and naturally it was the one time he hadn't taken a proper look round before going.... He dropped the chart, letting it hit the floor, and aimed himself toward the door.

He tried the knob and it didn't budge. Who locked a fucking door in a hospital? He wasn't a criminal... and there were the keys on the floor at his feet, lying as if they'd been kicked under the door. The absolute quiet crowded in on him again and he reached down for the keys, unlocking the door and peeking out into the hallway before stepping outside. Still no lights and no people; a cleaning cart sat at a crazy angle against the wall like it had been shoved there in haste. Did he wake up in the middle of a bomb scare, abandoned in the nurses' haste to get out? That would figure.

A few doors down the corridor to the right, he found a staff room. Couches, magazines, a fridge. A broken coffee cup on the floor, surrounded by a dried brown stain. Some of the ceramic had been ground to dust by a careless heel.

All of the magazines were dated September. A newspaper marked the end of that month. He eyed a comfortable-looking armchair for a moment but then caught sight of some lockers at the rear of the room and changed his priorities. After making it over there, slowly but stubbornly, he discovered one locker left open, as he'd hoped. Inside was a set of surgery scrubs, which he put on because at least they had pants, and some worn-out trainers at least a size too big, which he laced as tightly as he could manage.

On his way out of the room, he opened the fridge but it was shut off as well; everything inside had gone off and was covered in green and white mold. He found a sealed water bottle in the door and took that, ripping the cap off and draining it so greedily he spilled tepid water down his chin and then stood gasping for air, his stomach lurching a bit. He chucked the bottle in the bin on his way out the door.

The elevators stood silent and dark so he took the stairs, and the hospital entrance looked like the scene of a riot. He was glad of the trainers as he crunched over broken glass in front of the shop and stopped in front of the remains of a row of vending machines. One was tipped over on its front, a sticky puddle of Coke spreading over the floor. He found some full cans and stuffed them in the pockets of his scrubs before stepping into the ruined shop for a bag to fill.

The only thing left in the food vending machine was a row of Smarties tubes, but he took them, too, tossing the contents of one into his mouth and crunching the chocolates slowly as he left the hospital, mindful of how fast he'd drunk the water.

Once he set foot outside and saw and smelled the river, he realized he was at St. Thomas'. He walked half of the distance toward Westminster Bridge and looked round: more silence. No cars; no buses; no hordes of people, homeless and professional and tourists, as there always were around here. He stepped on something that clinked and rattled and looked down to see a pile of trinkets from some overturned souvenir cart. Paper and bags blew around him like tumbleweeds.

Where the fuck had London gone?

He walked.

Trafalgar fucking Square, empty. He passed noticeboards heavy with paper and stopped to read them, looking for clues. It was all people scared and panicking, looking for their families. Notices of evacuation schedules, which made his stomach turn to contemplate. Children's drawings of Mummy and Daddy. Bloody handprints smearing and ripping at the pages and pages of faces and names and mobile numbers. He felt sick and walked away.

He'd about decided he'd woken up in Hell when he saw the church, so he went inside. The first thing he saw inside the entry was graffiti: some joker had written in desperate-looking block letters, _REPENT_, and, _THE END IS EXTREMELY FUCKING NIGH._

The inside door stuck as he opened it and he quickly saw why: the pews had once been pushed up against the doors as a barricade, which had fallen. The room was full of bodies. And the smell of them, in a closed room... he gagged and backed out of the door, going up the stairs in the entryway instead. At the end of the corridor, he thought he saw a glimpse of movement.

"Hello?" he tried. His voice croaked a bit. He cleared his throat and repeated himself.

The thing moved again in the shadows and suddenly revealed itself to be a person.

"Father?"

The person started moving toward him. He had a strange, hobbling gait. And he was moving very quickly. All of a sudden he moved into a beam of light and revealed himself to be the priest. At least, he wore priest's robes. His hair was wild, his eyes were red and spittle covered his front. He looked mad as a hatter.

They stared each other down for a moment, and then the priest... thing sniffed the air, made a choking sound, and lunged.

A reflexive swing of the bag of junk food brought the creature in priest's clothes down and then it seemed like a good time to run.

"Oh fuck oh fuck oh _fuck_."

He went careening down the stairs, putting distance between him and the thing as fast as he could manage. Already there was a stitch in his side. More horrible choking sounds came from behind as he burst out of the church onto the darkening street and soon he was tearing down the empty road, his bag abandoned somewhere, as six of the damn things ran after him, flailing and choking.

Ten blocks later, they were still there and the stitch was threatening to make his Smarties come up as he ran past a petrol station. A shout that sounded nothing like the noises those creatures were making nearly made him fall over with relief. He followed it toward the row of pumps.

"Over here! Run!"

Something bright flew past his head and he heard a crunch and a whooshing noise as he ran. He risked a look and saw that one of the possessed people was on fire. Another Molotov cocktail flew by him and he ducked, running for the protection of the building. A person in black stood behind the pumps, still lobbing the firebombs. He sagged against the wall and tried not to throw up on his shoes, wanting to cry from the pain in his side. Finally he caught his breath and looked round the corner; his saviour was fiddling with tanks in the glowing light cast by four burning, choking, wailing _things._

Barely ten seconds later, a black streak went past, grabbing his arm and hauling him along. He dared not look back again and concentrated on trying to keep up. Suddenly, he was blown to the ground by searing heat as the whole station went up in a fireball. The heat was still stinging his lungs as he was pulled upright again and dragged through the streets, his new companion whooping and hollering all the way. Finally they stumbled to a stop at a newsagent's, the security gate was rattled up, and he was shoved inside before he'd even caught his breath. He sagged to the floor and panted as the gate crashed back down.

"What the fuck did you think you were doing, running about in the dark by yourself?"

The other man was just barely illuminated by the moonlight coming through the spaces in the gate. He had light hair and a muscular build but otherwise looked barely old enough to get into a pub. A look of perpetual smugness flitted about his features. Trying to breathe normally seemed preferable to answering.

"Don't suppose I'm lucky enough that you're a doctor," the man said eventually, looking pointedly at the scrubs.

"Nope. Patient." Somehow he felt guilty, like he was letting down the side for not being a doctor while wearing scrubs.

"How the hell did you survive?"

"I don't know. I was on my bike, making a delivery, and a car cut across me, and then I woke up in hospital this afternoon." He hesitated. "What month is it?"

"October. I think today is Halloween, in fact, so...." There was a pause and some crinkling, and then a packet of Maltesers was thrown at him. "Have some sweets. Eat up, it's all I've got. Actually, there might still be some jerky round here."

"What's your name?"

"Arthur. You?"

"Merlin." He tore open the packet, thinking as he looked inside that hopefully Arthur would find the jerky. Once you passed a certain age, the prospect of sugar at every meal seemed to lose its appeal.

Arthur surfaced from a pile of junk with a fistful of processed meat sticks and handed one to him, putting the rest aside.

"So, Merlin," he said, dragging the name out, "it seems you've got some catching up to do."

Merlin chewed a mouthful of jerky. "What in God's name were those things? They looked like people, but the _sounds_! And their _eyes_...."

"They're the Infected," Arthur said flatly. He crossed his arms and looked down, seeming to retreat into himself a bit. "Nearly a month ago, it started. Rioting, mostly. But right from the beginning, it was obvious it wasn't just that. Because it was happening in small villages, market towns. And then it wasn't on the TV anymore. It was in the streets and then it was coming in through the windows.

"It was a virus. An infection. Something in the blood. One drop of infected blood was all it took, and it takes over the body in _minutes_. By the time they tried to evacuate the cities, it was already too late. Army blockades were overrun. And that's when the exodus started. Before the TV and radio stopped broadcasting, there were reports of infection in Paris and New York."

Merlin was silent for a moment. Of course, it _would_ have to be the fast-moving sort of zombies. Thinking better of sharing that thought, instead he said, "Are you by yourself, too, then?"

Arthur leaned his head back against a shelf. "There was a friend of mine. He... four days ago."

"He died?"

"Infected."

"Is he," Merlin waved vaguely, "out there?"

"No." Arthur's voice was flat. "Get some sleep," he said suddenly. "You look like shit."

A retort died on Merlin's tongue.

***

Dawn stabbed through his eyelids in patchy squares, outlined by the security gate, and brought with it one of the worst headaches Merlin had ever had. He couldn't stifle a moan as he sat up. The noise made Arthur stir a few feet away, and his hand twitched around the grip of a huge knife as he opened his eyes. Thankfully, when he focused on Merlin he released his grip.

"You still look like shit," he said by way of greeting as he sat up and stretched, already looking far too chipper. "Breakfast?"

Merlin squinted in the sunlight. "Painkillers with a gunshot chaser, perhaps," he managed.

Arthur chuckled as he got to his feet and moved toward the racks on the wall. "Headache? Well, at least that means you've still got your brains in there under that scar."

Thinking half-formed and uncharitable thoughts, Merlin watched Arthur reach for a bottle of paracetamol on a shelf, revising his impressions in the daylight. Arthur was apparently one of those people who never looked like shit, even if perhaps they'd just fallen face-first in a great steaming pile of it. And the smugness was definitely coming out, now. He just barely caught the pill bottle before it hit him in the face. "Thanks."

A Sprite quickly followed it, although that was aimed closer to his stomach. He nearly dropped it, catching it one-handed as he was. Arthur settled across from him with a drink of his own and half of a Terry's Chocolate Orange.

"It's nearly fruit," he said, offering Merlin a segment. Merlin shook his head and washed down a pill with some warm Sprite.

"So what do you do with your days, besides blow up petrol stations?" he asked finally, breaking what might have passed for a companionable silence.

"I keep on breathing."

"Do you go out and look for other survivors?"

Arthur shook his head slowly. "Not many left. A whole month, Merlin. They've all evacuated or died or been infected... or all of those. You were a bit of a strange occurrence, I'm afraid."

Merlin almost asked why Arthur hadn't left, but instead, after chewing his lip a moment, he said, "My mum. She's in Deptford. It's not that far, I can walk from here."

"She'll be dead, as well," Arthur said.

"Fuck off."

"Merlin." His voice brooked no argument, and Merlin met his eyes, which were serious. "Listen to me. _Your mother is dead_. There is no way she is still there and still alive. And frankly, you should hope she went painlessly. Probably better than either of us can expect."

Merlin shook his head, unable to speak.

"You're wrong," he finally choked out, and scrambled to his feet. "You're fucking wrong and I'm going to go find her." He rattled the gate at the doorway. "How do I get this thing open?"

Arthur heaved a sigh from the floor and then Merlin heard shuffling, although he kept his gaze locked on the quiet street beyond the newsagent's doorway. His mind was going in circles like a hamster on a wheel.

After a moment there was a touch on his shoulder and he whirled round. Arthur handed him something and turned away to start packing a bag. Merlin looked down dully at the heavy thing in his hands.

"A cricket bat?"

"Gives them a good bashing. Mind the bloodstains."

He nearly dropped the bat when at last he saw the red patches on it, seeped into the wood. Arthur soon finished packing and slung the bag over his shoulder, shifting his machete into his right hand.

"Right. Off we go, then." He reached down for the edge of the gate and they hoisted it up enough to duck under and into the overwhelmingly vacant street. "Sodding Deptford," Arthur muttered, not quite quietly enough, as he set off. Merlin looked round nervously before hurrying to catch up.

Arthur was clearly glowering at the universe so Merlin felt it wise to stay silent for several minutes. Finally, he said, "Why are you coming along? I could have left on my own."

Arthur stopped suddenly and whirled to face him, and he regretted opening his mouth.

"Are you mentally handicapped?" Arthur's voice dripped with disdain. "You don't go anywhere alone. Even in daylight. It's not safe. Besides," he said, giving his knife a show-offy twirl with his wrist, "I haven't been to Deptford since this started and there might be things there worth checking out."

"You want to _loot Deptford_?" Merlin nearly dropped his bat.

"Oh, be sensible. No one there will be needing anything they've left behind. Just think of it as shopping without money, if you like." Arthur started up a brisk pace, calling over his shoulder, "Hurry up, Merlin, we need to be back before dark."

***

They took two rest breaks on the way there and Merlin was still overwhelmingly glad to collapse on the front stairs of his house. Arthur hauled him back to his feet on the way by, peering in the windows before trying the door. It was locked and Merlin automatically reached for the key he no longer carried just as his companion kicked the door in with an enormous combat boot. He swallowed a protest, seeing already that it would fall on uncaring ears.

Everything looked the same, except for a layer of dust. And there was a smell. It faintly tickled his nose as he went for the stairs but grew stronger by the landing. Arthur hung back behind him but he kept stubbornly climbing, finding himself following the stench against his will and better judgement. When it grew strongest around his mum's bedroom door, he had to talk himself into turning the knob.

She was on the bed, with the sheets pulled up. An empty wine bottle and a handful of sleeping pills sat on the nightstand. He covered his nose with his shirt collar as he reached forward to grab a piece of paper from her grey hand. It was an old photo of the two of them, from a summer at his aunt's in the country. There was a crease in it across her eyes and the back said,

> Merlin,
> 
> With endless love I left you sleeping. Now I've gone to join you. Don't wake up.
> 
> xx Mum

A sob ripped out of his throat before he knew it. The photo crumpled in his fist as Arthur appeared next to him, drawing him into a rough hug. "Let it out; just let it out," he murmured, and for a moment, Merlin allowed himself to do it. Then with one last hiccup he broke free and made for the door. Arthur followed, shutting it carefully behind him.

"Have you got clothes here?" he asked, still quiet.

Merlin nodded and went into his bedroom across the hallway. He changed quickly and stuffed a pair of jeans and a coat into an old messenger bag, stopping to stare at his pale face, lopsided hair and patchy beard in the mirror for a moment before rushing back into the hall, where Arthur was waiting. "Let's get the fuck out of here, please," he said, his voice scratchy. Arthur looked at him for a moment and then nodded, leading the way back down the staircase. When they emerged into fresh air again, both taking great heaving gasps to clear the smell from their noses, Merlin stopped in the road to stare up at his house—his mum's house—one more time. His cricket bat hung loosely in his fingers.

"She went peacefully," Arthur said.

Something in Merlin broke, possibly for a final time. He whirled on the other man. "What the fuck do you know about it?" he yelled. "My mum, my only family," he snarled, gesturing wildly at the dead house, "is _dead!_ I am _alone in this world!_" For a wild second he wanted to take a swing at Arthur with the bat and add fresh bloodstains to it.

"Join the club," Arthur said shortly, walking briskly down the road. He seemed to have forgotten his plans to pillage the neighbourhood. Merlin stared after him a moment and then started jogging to catch up again. He'd known this idiot less than a day and already he seemed to spend all his time running after him.

***

They were making their way through The Borough and hadn't yet said another word to each other when Merlin thought he saw something blinking on the edge of his sight. He slowed and turned toward the source and yes, there it was: colourful, blinking lights on a tower block in the near distance. He reached out to grab Arthur's sleeve.

"Look."

They both stood and stared at the lights, neither moving nor speaking. The blinking pattern seemed odd to Merlin—perhaps it was Morse code for something?

"We should go see what that's about," he said, still transfixed.

"You're insane. It might be a trap."

"A trap?" He turned to Arthur at last, floored. "A _trap_. Because those bloody choking B-movie nightmares _clearly_ show the intelligence required to lure people into traps to eat them!"

Arthur's look was cool. "I think it wouldn't require much thinking to fool certain people."

"Shut up. Let's go." Merlin was determined not to be the one doing the chasing-after this time. Alas, Arthur kept up with him easily, twirling his machete in a manner that looked much easier than Merlin suspected it was. He would probably lose fingers trying those moves. He kept on stolidly marching toward the lights.

From a block away the lights could be seen to be strung up on the balcony of a flat about ten stories up, and white sheets saying, 'HELP' in large, black letters had been tied to the railings of the flats on either side. Captain Prat frowned up at them and predictably said, "I still don't like this."

"Stay here, then," Merlin said over his shoulder as he made for the car park, which was closest. Inside it was dark and nearly empty of cars; the entrance to the lift and stairs was barricaded by a truly staggering number of shopping trolleys. Arthur appeared at his shoulder and stepped forward to tug at the closest baskets, evidently trying to make some fall on his stupid head. Merlin shook his head.

"What is it with tower blocks and shopping trolleys?" he said, grinning at his own joke.

Arthur ignored him and started climbing the stack of wheels and wires as if it were a perfectly sane thing to do. He looked back at Merlin from the top of the mountain.

"Are you coming or not?" he snapped, as if it had been his idea to come in here all along. Merlin muttered horrible things to himself as he started looking for a foothold on the bottom layer of trolleys.

He would have been hard-pressed to suggest a way they could have made _more_ noise climbing over the obstacle, but shortly they were on the stairs and still in one piece.

"Ten stories up," Arthur said from in front of him, not bothering to look round at him to speak. Now Merlin couldn't count, either. He bit his lip to keep the retorts down until they died away and followed doggedly.

He only made it five flights before his body decided to remind him of how he'd just woken up in hospital a day before and had been getting far too much exercise since then. When he collapsed loudly on the fifth floor landing, Arthur finally turned around and jogged down several steps to join him.

"What's wrong?" he asked, peering into Merlin's face in a disconcerting manner. "Tired?"

"Headache," Merlin bit out, nodding a little.

He got a disgusted noise in reply. "Why didn't you say anything, you idiot?" Arthur sat down on a stair and began rummaging through his bag.

Merlin sighed. "I assumed you didn't give a shit." He blinked as a bottle of painkillers was shoved into his hand.

"My God, you're thick. You were in a bloody coma for over a month! You've got no fat on you at all and you've had nothing except sugar; you're crashing. So what you need is some pills and more sugar. Pepsi or Tango?"

Merlin opened his mouth but found himself shushed before he got a sound out.

"Did you hear that?"

He raised an eyebrow and listened.

Crashing noises. The shopping trolleys.

Merlin didn't know where he found the energy but he was on his feet in an instant and charging up the stairs after Arthur. He nearly dropped the cricket bat in his haste to move but his head still pounded till he thought his eyes would pop out and he found himself lagging far too soon. Arthur was half a flight of stairs ahead and the gap between them increased as he watched. The Infected were on the stairs now; he could hear their demonic screeching and the pounding of their feet as they gained on him.

"Arthur!" he yelled, wheezing. "Arthur, for fuck's sake, wait!" He tripped on a stair and nearly hit his face on the railing. He clung to it with his free hand, dragging himself up but it wasn't nearly quick enough and the Infected behind him were getting louder and closer.

"Arthur!" he tried one last time, and the blessed, fantastic man ran to him and hauled his arm over a shoulder, half-dragging him toward safety.

Merlin heard another voice between the gasps of his own lungs. It sounded like a woman. He looked up.

"Come on! Hurry, they're almost here!" she called, waving at them. She was holding open a fire door and had some kind of weapon in her other hand.

Arthur's grunt reverberated though Merlin's ribs where they were pressed together as they made a Herculean effort up the last ten steps. Merlin felt a strong push on his back and nearly fell through the doorway, overcome with relief even through he knew the danger wasn't quite past yet. Arthur set him down semi-gently and went back to the woman; there was a crackling sound and he smelled burnt flesh before the door slammed shut on the Infected. He looked up as they finished dragging an enormous bookshelf or something in front of the door. Infected thudded uselessly against the other side, still screaming ceaselessly.

"Up we get," the woman said, grabbing one of Merlin's arms as Arthur picked up the other, and Merlin was frog-marched down the corridor and into one of the flats. He leaned against a handy wall and blinked until his vision cleared and his heart didn't feel like it would burst from his ribs anytime soon, and then the woman was standing in front of him with a thoughtful look on her face. She was ridiculously attractive and he was suddenly intensely aware of his skinny frame, his lopsided surgery haircut, his patchy, month-old beard, and that he generally looked like something near death. She was tapping something against her palm and he realized suddenly that it was a taser. The crackling sound and burnt smell made sense, now. He coughed into his fist a little and drew a deep, ragged breath.

"Hullo."

She smiled. "You look a bit done-in."

Arthur materialized from some room down the hall. "He was in hospital till yesterday."

The woman quirked a perfect eyebrow. "I don't think you were ready to be released yet." Her tone sounded frank but her eyes twinkled. "Come have a seat, before you fall over," she said, seizing his arm and tugging him into the living room. He made a beeline for the sofa and couldn't stifle a groan as he sat down.

When he found the presence of mind to open his eyes again, he was faced with three identical smirks—he'd walked right past another woman sitting in the armchair. She introduced herself as Gwen, and while she wasn't the same calibre of knockout as her friend—Morgana—she was still quite pretty and had a sweet look about her where Morgana exuded feistiness. Most interestingly, though, Gwen's right arm was in a cast that went over her elbow. He looked at it and she must have seen the question on his face, because she waved her arm a little in her sling and said, "Car accident. In September."

Merlin thought. "That should be nearly ready to come off, then, shouldn't it?"

"Yes... but my arm isn't exactly top-notch yet. I haven't got a brace or anything for it and I don't want to break it again. And, you know, no doctor to go to." She looked vaguely embarrassed for her predicament. He was trying to come up with a reassuring reply but Morgana beat him to it.

"Oh, Gwen, will you stop! It's not your fault, is it. We'll get that cast off you and you'll be fine, I promise."

Gwen looked cheered up a bit and Arthur seemed to take that as an opportunity to redirect the conversation.

"What are you two doing barricaded up here, anyway?" he asked, leaning forward over his knees a bit as he spoke. "I suppose it's somewhat defensible as positions go, but you're practically stranded in this flat."

Morgana rubbed at her eyes. "We've done alright, though," she said. "Of course, we went through quite a few of the empty flats and took what we could use, and with only two of us we can survive quite some time on the food we've got. But...."

Merlin looked up at her. "But?"

She twisted a lock of her hair between her fingers and didn't answer for a moment; apparently it was her turn to be embarrassed.

"We're nearly out of water. We had some of those large cooler jugs that were left, and the water still worked for several days after the outbreak, so we made sure to fill containers, just in case. But we need water for so many things. Even conserving it, a whole month has dried up our reserves." A lock of hair slipped in front of her eyes; she tucked it back behind her ears and went back to staring at her hands in her lap. "We even tried collecting rainwater in buckets and pots on the roof, but it hasn't rained in nearly a week, now." Morgana finally met Arthur's eyes and hers shone a little with wetness. "With Gwen's arm... we didn't know what to do. We're so glad you came."

Arthur, for some reason, looked at Merlin. It made him unaccountably nervous.

"I don't suppose you have any liquor," Arthur said finally, still looking at Merlin.

***

Night had well and truly fallen, and after Morgana had cut Merlin's hair to a uniform length in the blinking glow of their generator-run fairy lights, Merlin found himself in the tiny bathroom, attempting to shave off his patchy coma-beard by candlelight with a dry razor.

"Fuck!" he hissed at another sting on his cheek. Blood welled up and he dabbed at the cut with a rag that was beginning to look rather more reddish than it had when he'd started this futile exercise.

"Going to die of blood loss before the zombies get me," he muttered, taking another careful pass at the longish stubble on his jawline.

Arthur opened the door suddenly and it was all Merlin could do not to cut his own throat in his surprise.

"How's that going?" Arthur smiled as Merlin inspected for cuts and then started to shave again. He looked far too amused.

"I think using tweezers might have ended up being the less painful option," he retorted.

Arthur crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorframe, watching the nightmare in progress like there was nothing else he'd rather be doing. "You can have the spare bed," he said quietly. "I'll take the living room."

Merlin shot him a look and he shrugged. "I don't need you dying on me, do I?" Arthur said, far too casually. "You look like you need a good night's sleep or twelve, Coma Boy. I'll just be sure to wake you every hour."

"I haven't got a concussion! Anymore," Merlin amended. He held the candle up high enough to see his face more clearly and decided to give up on shaving, having finally managed to remove nearly as much hair as he had blood from his jaw. He left the bathroom with the candle, chivvying Arthur out before him. "Thanks," he added belatedly. Arthur nodded and by unspoken agreement they walked into the living room, which was now lit by so many candles it brought to mind a church altar.

Merlin set his candle down on the table and leaned back into the sofa cushions. "What do you make of them, then?" he said.

Arthur stuffed a pillow behind his head and settled into the other corner of the sofa. "They need us," he said. "More than we need them."

Merlin thought of Morgana and her taser and felt inclined to disagree. But then.... "Gwen's arm is a concern, certainly," he said, staring at the flickering light patterns on the ceiling. "I can see why they wouldn't have risked an escape on their own. Especially if they don't know where to go." He shifted to look at Arthur. "But then what are we expected to do for them? Find them more water? Break them out, take them to the newsagent's or one of your other likely numerous hiding spots, try to get the cast off and then just carry on? Stay _here_?"

They were all shit ideas. By Arthur's silence, he agreed and couldn't come up with anything better.

_There's safety in numbers,_ Merlin thought, _but when do the numbers get too large to be safe?_ Still, in his mind, four people had a much better collective chance at it than two. If it was even worth the effort to try.

"Arthur."

"Mm."

"Why do you do it?"

"Why do I do what, Merlin?"

"This," he said, gesturing vaguely and then realizing he needed to do better than that. "Surviving. Carrying on. Do you think there's an end to this, a victory for humanity in the offering? If we can't leave England, if this is happening all over the planet... what comes after survival?"

"Nothing ever comes after survival, Merlin. That's all we're doing, any of us. Infected or no Infected."

"So you have no plans for the future besides philosophizing, then."

"Like what? Finding a cure? Meeting a nice girl, so we can fall in love and repopulate the planet? Is that your five-year plan, Merlin?" Arthur paused and took a deep breath, apparently trying to calm himself down. He rearranged his pillow. "Just focus on the moments as they come. You'll drive yourself mad thinking about what comes after." He sighed. "Get some sleep; you look like hell."

Merlin took his candle and made for the spare room without another word. His sleep was mercifully dreamless.

***

"This is a terrible fucking idea," Arthur said. Merlin was keeping his thoughts to himself as he finished his breakfast of tinned pears, but privately he didn't disagree. He made eye contact with Gwen, who sat on the couch with a bemused look on her face. She smiled at him.

Morgana practically snarled at Arthur. "What's so terrible about it?" she shouted. "I told you the fucking car's downstairs in the car park; the tank's full and it runs fine! We can all get the hell out of here! Today!"

"And go where, exactly, Morgana?" he shouted back. "Are you planning to drive to France? Do you have a little map with Infected-free areas marked out on it? Because if they're all in blue, you know, they're actually the sodding _sea_, which is the _only place we'd be safe_!"

Now would be a terrible time to laugh, Merlin told himself sternly. Morgana had a look on her face that made him wonder where the taser was at this moment. She took a breath and opened her mouth again, probably to shout at Arthur some more, but Gwen cut her off as she levered herself off the sofa.

"Oh, Morgana, would you stop? And you, too, don't encourage her." Gwen settled her sling across her chest and looked like someone's stern mum. "We can't stay here much longer and we all know London isn't safe; let's find supplies for the car and drive out to the country. There were fewer people there to begin with so surely there are fewer Infected, yeah? We'll find a sturdy cottage or something and wait it out." She smiled suddenly. "There'll be fresh water, and we could grow vegetables or something!"

The country sounded more attractive to Merlin already. He looked at the other two, saw the matching disgruntled looks on their faces, and spontaneously made up his mind. He sidled up to Gwen and threw an arm over her good shoulder.

"Well," he said. "Where's that car, then?"

Morgana gave him a smile which he hoped to have directed at him again someday before skipping off to get the car keys and some other things. Gwen followed her, talking about suitcases. As their voices faded into another room, he looked at Arthur, took in his scathing glare, and suddenly felt very tired.

"Oh, get over yourself. You're hardly the boss of us," he snapped, picking up his empty tin and spoon and heading for the kitchen.

Annoyingly, Arthur followed. "I never said I was the fucking boss, but surely you can see what a shit idea this is."

Merlin looked at his tin and spoon and finally just dumped both in the sink. They couldn't exactly clean up, anyway. He turned round and leaned against the counter to face his erstwhile companion.

"It's the least shit of a heap of shit ideas, though, so unless you can put your brain to something besides pissing on other peoples' plans and make up a better one, I would rather not hear about it." Arthur straightened a bit but Merlin just glared back. "No one's forcing you to come, either; if you'd rather stay then stay. The three of us should be just fine on our own, especially once we've got that cast off Gwen."

He headed for the doorway, brushing past Arthur in the process, and was stopped by a hand grasping his arm. He looked down at the hand and then up at Arthur, knowing his face was still angry and not caring in the slightest. When Arthur didn't do anything except stand there looking back, Merlin finally raised his eyebrows, signalling that he should get on with it already.

And still the prat took his sweet time, possibly having taken himself by surprise as well.

"Look," he said finally. "I—you—I'll come with you. You're... you're right. We can't really stay. We should go. To the country if we must."

It took another moment for him to let go of Merlin; he gave him a thump on the back as he did that was probably meant to be friendly, but just winded Merlin slightly.

"Come on, then," Merlin said, once he'd managed to fill his lungs again sufficiently to speak. "Things to do."

Once they'd packed all the leftover food and potentially useful items from the flat into boxes and suitcases (the girls had even found some jeans and a coat in next-door's closets that fit Merlin, and he'd never realized how exciting it could be to own more than one pair of trousers), it was time to go pack up this car of Morgana's and leave. Morgana and Arthur went first, hauling an armload each and keeping a lookout in the shadows for lurking Infected, and Merlin and Gwen brought up the rear, Merlin hauling the last box of tinned food and Gwen dragging a wheeled suitcase stuffed with clothing with her good hand.

"I heard you two talking last night, you know," Gwen said.

Merlin was so distracted by thinking he saw Infected round every turning of the stairs that it took him a moment to register what she was talking about. When he put two and two together, he winced.

"Sorry about that," he said. "Arthur's a bit of a prat, but he wasn't really thinking of leaving you two behind. I really don't think he has it in him to do a thing like that."

She smiled. "You both certainly had valid points," she said, "but you were wrong about one thing."

"What's that?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You need us as well."

Merlin's cheeks got hot. "I, er—I don't think he really meant anything by—by that bit about repopulating the planet," he stammered.

She started laughing. He really needed to meet some people who wouldn't be so quick to laugh at him. If anyone fitting that description existed.

"Oh, Merlin, that's not what I was driving at." She giggled some more. "What I meant was... you're not in very good shape yourselves, alright? Two people—even two fit, fairly capable people—won't last long, will they. Something happens to one and then the other's on their own. Four is a better number, I think. And anyway," she nudged him in the side as they stepped onto the fourth storey landing, "my arm may be broken, but you were just in a hospital, weren't you? You've had two nights' sleep and some exercise now and you still look knackered all the time! Think I'll take my chances with the cast." She grinned and he couldn't help grinning back a bit. She seemed to have a talent for making a point without sounding hostile about it.

"Speaking of knackered," he said, stopping to put down his box on the landing, "my arms are about to fall off."

They sat for a short rest, trying to relax a bit but keeping their eyes open. Infected weren't much for sunlight, apparently, but the cool darkness of buildings was an ideal place for them to roam during the daytime.

They saw nothing and shortly got up to finish their trek, with Merlin helping Gwen manhandle her suitcase over the shopping trolley barricade.

"About time!" Arthur called when they appeared at last in the car park. "We'd nearly given you up for dead! _Merlin_," he continued as Merlin approached him, "convince this madwoman to give me the keys. I don't trust her to drive that thing and I'm not sure she even has a license."

"I heard that and you can't have them, so stop moaning and get in," Morgana said, moving round to the driver's side from the back of a blue Ford Fiesta and opening the door. The boot was just large enough to accommodate the box he was carrying, so Merlin loaded it carefully and climbed into the rear door behind the driver's seat. Gwen sat next to him and they were off, with Morgana driving and Arthur complaining loudly about it from the front seat.

After a short but animated discussion about exactly how foolish it would be to go north with winter approaching, no functional power grid anywhere in the country, and no idea where they were to hole up anyway, it was decided that they should drive in a south-southwest direction and so they made for the M4. First, Arthur insisted on stopping at a random corner shop in Waterloo and hauled a puzzled Merlin out of the car with him.

"Come on, I need two pairs of hands," he said, making for the security gate of the shop (which sported a large dent in the metal grating as well as some black streaks that looked like scorch marks) and hauling it upwards. Merlin ducked inside and managed to crank it up high enough for them both to walk under, and then turned round to come face-to-face with what Arthur had demanded they stop for.

"Fuck me," he breathed. "What are you, Rambo?"

Arthur ignored him and started sorting through the cache of weapons, which looked large enough to have been assembled from every shop for miles that sold them, and perhaps a military installation or two as well. He picked up two shotguns, a handgun, and what might have been an assault rifle, putting them aside near the door. "Help me find the right ammunition," he said, waving Merlin toward a pile of bullets and things like he was supposed to know what was going on.

Merlin took a couple of steps toward it and then decided that was close enough, frowning at it and at Arthur as he scowled back.

"Well, come on then, if you're going to be mostly useless you can at least carry things." He grabbed a plastic shopping basket from near the counter area and thrust it at Merlin, who hung onto it obediently as it was loaded up with ammunition. When the basket was nearly full, Arthur nodded decisively and stood up.

"That should do it," he said, picking up the weapons and handing Merlin a shotgun of his very own. After examining the assault rifle (and where in the hell had he found that, anyway?) a moment more, he shook his head a bit and then left it, choosing another handgun instead.

As they walked back toward the car where the girls waited, watching them curiously, Merlin grinned at a thought. "I knew you had caches all over the place," he said cheerfully. "Like a fucking squirrel! Hidey-holes up and down the South Bank!"

Arthur glared, probably because Merlin had just called him a squirrel. He just grinned back some more and they got in the car.

The girls didn't say much about the guns, except for a cheeky comment from Morgana about the shopping basket, and they continued quietly on their way out of London. After about ten minutes, though, Merlin spotted something.

He leaned over the seat and poked Arthur in the shoulder. "Look, it's a petrol station you haven't blown up yet!" He pointed and amazingly, Arthur snorted in what seemed to be amusement.

Morgana pulled the car up to the pumps; it was actually a Sainsbury's with petrol. They all peered out the windows. "D'you think the pumps still work?"

"Unlikely."

"There should still be lots of food, though. It'd be nice to have more food."

They brought the car round to the front doors.

"It's completely dark in there," Merlin said, wondering if lowering the window would help him see inside better. "Could be full of Infected."

Arthur shifted in his seat. "Probably is."

Merlin chewed his lip as he thought. "Is it worth the risk?"

The boys looked at each other as if it was going to help them read each other's minds.

"Yeah," Arthur said eventually. "Let's just be careful and we should be fine."

Arthur tried to make Merlin take a handgun but Merlin firmly refused, preferring his bat. Once the girls had armed themselves (and Arthur didn't try to give _them_ guns, the twat), they grabbed two shopping trolleys and gathered in front of the doorway.

"Have we got a torch?" Gwen suddenly asked.

"In the back," Morgana sighed, going to get it. It was, in fact, better than a torch: it was a Maglite, which practically made it a weapon as well. They assembled again.

"Are we going to have to pry the doors open?" Merlin asked, looking at the powerless automatic doors.

Arthur, instead of answering, merely brought out his gun and shot the glass until it shattered onto the pavement. The noise was incredible and they all held their breath, straining to hear any sounds of Infected inside, reacting and maybe ready to burst out at them.

Nothing. They exhaled almost as one and then started pushing the trolleys through the broken glass, lifting the wheels over the doorframe.

"Stay alert, and make sure you don't pick up anything that needs to be cooked," Arthur said, steering a trolley one-handed with his gun ready in the other. Gwen held the torch, Morgana pushed the other trolley, and Merlin brought up the rear, his hands twisting nervously around the grip of his bat.

It had to be said that supermarkets were beyond creepy in the dark, regardless of the possible life-threatening things hiding in the shadows. Merlin decided he was changing his stance against fluorescent lights: if he ever again set foot in a Sainsbury's with the lights properly going, he thought he might weep with joy over every glaringly-lit inch.

It was slow going in the dark, trying to navigate the place with only a big torch, but they soon filled their carts with tins and boxes and jars of anything they thought might still taste somewhat fresh. By unspoken agreement, the boys stayed clear of the sweets, although Gwen and Morgana grabbed several Terry's Chocolate Oranges. Merlin tasted bile just at the sight of them.

Probably, though, the best finds of the trip were a handful of torches with batteries, several bottles of good whiskey that Arthur found stashed in a corner, of all places, and most amazingly, an entire crate of apples that were still edible, standing out in the middle of a produce cart full of otherwise mouldering compost.

"There's an argument against organic food if I ever saw one," Arthur said delightedly as he grabbed an apple from the top of the crate and cleaned it on his trousers (which were barely clean themselves). He took a big bite and juice ran down his chin. Merlin's mouth watered and he picked up an apple for himself.

"All right," Gwen said as he chewed his first bite noisily, "let's get back outside before we start eating all the food, yeah? I'd like to get out of town before dark, myself."

Merlin felt fleetingly wrong about leaving without paying, and then laughed quietly at himself as he helped hoist the heavy carts back over the broken doorframe. As they opened the back hatch of their car, Morgana produced with a flourish a bundle of carrier bags from the registers, and so they dumped their loot into those before chucking them into the boot.

They were just pulling away, with Morgana still driving but Gwen in Arthur's former seat, when Merlin caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. He whipped round in his seat to look properly at the front of the Sainsbury's and could have sworn he saw an arm outlined in the doorway, but it was gone the next instant.

"Did you forget the milk or something?" Arthur asked lazily from his left.

"No, it's nothing. I'm just seeing things. Bit twitchy, I suppose." He faced forward again as Morgana accelerated onto the spookily vacant M4.

***

They opted to drive slower than one usually drives in the country when they can get away with it, to conserve fuel, but even given their speed and the detour to loot Sainsbury's on the way out of London, they found themselves near Bristol by the late afternoon. After a quick debate while idling at the junction of the M4 and M5, the consensus was to head south, along the coast, which was somewhat more populated than if they'd kept on toward Wales but also likely warmer in the wintertime. Morgana aimed the car down the M5 and about ten minutes' drive past Bristol, pulled off into a field. The sun was out and the grass still green as they bounced along, coming to a stop near the middle of the field where they could see all around for a mile.

"Right," Morgana said cheerfully, "Teatime!"

They spread out some of their food on blankets and had a picnic, of all things, laughing and smiling as though everything were normal. And maybe, Merlin thought as he grabbed another apple, this was their new 'normal'. What else were they going to do with their lives, after all? He leaned back, chewing, and looked round; there was a cottage half a mile away, back near the motorway. He squinted at it some more but could make out no details or movement. Perhaps, he thought, they'd go have a look later.

When they had all eaten their fill and stretched and lazed in the autumn sunshine for a while, Arthur spoke up. "What next?" he asked. "Do we keep going south or stay here for the night?"

"Camping under the stars?" Gwen murmured, smiling up at the sky.

Merlin sat up. "Well, it's safe at least. If we keep watch, we'll have lots of warning if any Infected come out. It doesn't look like rain, and if it did we could sleep in the car." He shrugged. "I vote we stay. We're here already and I'm quite comfortable."

He grinned at Arthur, who rolled his eyes. _Lazy git_, his face communicated clearly.

"Yeah, alright," Morgana said through a dainty yawn. "I don't think I fancy driving any more today, anyway." She stretched like a cat and sprawled on her blanket, her eyes closed against the sunshine.

"Well," said Arthur, "if you ladies are planning to nap and work on your tans, then Merlin and I are going to go have a look at the house over there before it gets dark." He got up, brushing off his jeans. "Come on, Merlin, get off your arse."

Merlin, who was sure he'd just pointed out how comfortable he was _right there_, opened his mouth to say as much but then thought better of it. With as aggrieved a sigh as he could force out, he hauled himself up to follow Arthur, grabbing his trusty bat almost as an afterthought. Time spent in a meadow this peaceful and sunny made the idea of Infected seem like a bizarre nightmare, and yet Merlin knew better: this was a nightmare he was caught in. He trudged through the grass after Arthur, studying the details of the cottage as they got closer.

It was large enough to have housed a family and still seemed to be mostly intact, which surprised him a bit; it was quite close to the motorway and seemed like it might have been a target for squatters or looters already. But no windows were broken and indeed it seemed shut up tight. When they reached the door, he almost wanted to knock first, but Arthur just tried the knob. It turned easily, which was perhaps worrying. With a look back at Merlin, he opened the door and walked into the dusty gloom inside.

He stopped in the entryway, hands on hips, looking about the room with rapidly declining interest. "Hmm," he grunted, "nothing but a lot of dust. Have fun, Merlin; I'm going to look round the outside." With a clap on the shoulder that nearly sent Merlin sprawling arse over teakettle, Arthur marched back outside.

Merlin squinted into the gloom. Besides the adjustment from the brightness outdoors to indoors, all of the shutters were closed. He moved across the entryway, which was also the sitting room, to open the shutters on the nearest window. Barely had he flicked the latch, sending a beam of dusty sunlight across the floor, when there was a creak behind him. Thinking it was Arthur, come back to announce his continued boredom, he turned nonchalantly.

The child screeched at him and lunged.

"Oh fuck me!" Merlin felt his back slam into the wall as he grabbed blindly for his cricket bat, which he had foolishly set down to open the shutters.

The hissing, spitting, infected boy leaped at him and by pure reflex he was able to plant a foot in the boy's sternum, shoving him off. The bat clattered onto the floor and the boy—thing—the Infected shook himself, looking like he was about to go for Merlin's throat once more.

_Oh please don't you fucking dare come at me,_ Merlin prayed to whoever might yet be listening, holding up a hand in front of him like he thought that might do some good, reaching for the handle of his bat with the other.

The Infected twitched like he was about to attack once more, and then curiously, he stopped. His sides heaved for breath and his eyes still looked wild but he stood rooted to the spot, as if mesmerized by Merlin's hand. When Merlin noticed that this was happening, he was so startled that he forgot what he was doing, and then suddenly the moment passed, the child snapped out of his trance, and Merlin had about the space between heartbeats to lay his hands on his weapon again before he was dead or worse.

He shoved himself to his feet just in time and swung two-handed, squeezing his eyes shut and wishing he couldn't hear or feel the crack when he made contact.

Reluctantly opening his eyes again, he was endlessly thankful that only one hit had been necessary, and then he was violently ill right there on the floor.

He ripped a cheerfully patterned curtain from the door to wipe the fresh blood from the bat and dropped it on the floor before leaving the cottage as quickly as he could. Arthur was coming round the far side as he stepped out, blinking, into the sunshine.

"Find anything useful?" he asked, grinning and twirling his machete in that infuriatingly competent way.

"No," Merlin said, pulling the door shut and setting a fast pace back to where the girls were still enjoying the late sun. He saw Arthur's quizzical look from the corner of his eye and released a long breath when he didn't say anything else.

***

They did stay in the meadow that night, and Merlin took first watch, promising to wake someone up to relieve him after a few hours and then positioning himself on the roof of the car with his bat and a shotgun. The bat was hardly effective in his position but he couldn't deny a strong attachment to it by this point. Anyway, he didn't trust himself to hit anything with the shotgun, let alone in the dark, and so he happily kept his extra weapon while everyone else bedded down with blankets on the grass. It was a warm night and they thought they would be alright sleeping on the ground.

After an hour, he heard quiet, even breathing (and snoring from Morgana, and he was filing that away for future blackmail) and, assuming that the other three were all asleep, was shocked nearly to death when Arthur hopped up from nowhere to sit on the roof beside him.

"Some lookout you are," Arthur mocked when Merlin had gotten his heart rate back under control.

"You shouldn't shock a sick man; I could keel over dead, you know," Merlin gasped.

"And yet, I think you'll survive," was Arthur's response as he peered out at the horizon, which was at this point indistinguishable from the black sky above it.

"How come you're not sleeping?" Merlin asked, not really caring, because he felt glad for the company to keep him awake.

Arthur shrugged, a subtle movement in the dark; there were only stars and a half-full moon for light. "I may go to bed when you do; wake Morgana for next watch," he said. Already those two had a complex system of mutual torment going, and naturally now Merlin was being dragged into it.

They shared a comfortable silence for possibly half an hour, just feeling a soft breeze and the still-warm metal of the car underneath them. Arthur was the one to finally break it.

"Penny for your thoughts," he said.

"You'd get change back," Merlin replied, which got a snort. "Seriously, I was only thinking of how quiet it is. I've never been anywhere this quiet. I nearly feel like I've gone deaf." He cast a sideways glance at Arthur. "What are you thinking of?"

"Just... the future."

"And you said it was madness to think about the future," Merlin chided softly.

"Well, I never said I wasn't a bit mad." And that was certainly true. "But now we've left London and I've left my life of the past four weeks, all that hiding and hoarding food and weapons and darting place to place—no squirrel comments, you twat—and now... we're in Somerset and sleeping in an open field. It's daft. I can't help wondering what tomorrow and the day after and the months and years after will look like. Now that I might live to see them."

And suddenly Merlin got it and he had to bite down a laugh.

"You can't sleep. You can't sleep in the open," he said. A snicker escaped him anyway.

Arthur moved in the dark and it looked like he was rubbing his knuckle against his lip, a tic that Merlin had already noticed. It made him smile and he nearly wanted to tease some more, but kept it to himself. Arthur likely had enough neuroses to deal with that he didn't need Merlin laughing at them to top things off.

"It's all right," he said instead. "I won't tell anyone you have a weakness."

"Thanks," Arthur growled back, but Merlin could hear a smile in it. They were quiet for another long while and Merlin thought that might be it for the sharing, but then Arthur spoke yet again, shattering his preconceptions.

"You know," he said, and he was speaking so softly that Merlin nearly had to strain to hear him, "before you came along... I said I'd had a friend with me. And I lost him."

Merlin remembered. Arthur's friend who'd been gone four days. Infected. Merlin knew exactly what had happened to him, now.

"For four days," Arthur went on, still quiet, sounding almost unsure of himself, Merlin thought, "I was all alone. Running and fighting. And I told you how one person can't survive for long alone." He paused. "I was figuring I had days left. If I was very lucky. I couldn't keep it up, not for long. There's the physical danger, obviously, but besides that, the loneliness... it wears on you, Merlin.

"Owen and I hadn't seen anyone else alive in a week before he was infected, and I was starting to think there was no one else left at all, in the whole of London. In the whole country, maybe. Actually, that same afternoon before I met you... well, that's not important." He stopped again and looked at Merlin, which Merlin knew because he was looking back at Arthur. "Anyway, I just wanted to say. Thanks. For showing up when you did. Even if you _are_ an idiot."

Merlin smiled at him in the dark and wondered if he could see it. "Go to bed, you prat."

"Yeah, alright."

Arthur jumped down from the roof and got his blankets, and Merlin settled himself for another hour or two of lookout duty before waking Morgana. He didn't think he would be able to get to sleep if she was snoring like that.

***

Merlin was alone.

The girls—they were gone. He didn't know where. He'd seen them, had seen how they left him but that was so long ago and he couldn't remember. He saw flashes instead: of their faces, smiling and laughing, stark with fear, screaming without a sound. He saw his mother laid out on her bed, rotted away to a skeleton. The skull had the same grin she used to have when she teased him and ruffled his hair.

Arthur was missing, and Merlin was looking for him. He'd even lost his cricket bat. He looked down at his hands and he was holding one of the shotguns. Was it loaded? How did you check if it was loaded? He tried to hold it up to look but it wasn't a shotgun, it was a shopping trolley with a wobbly wheel, the bottom lined with carrier bags and Terry's Chocolate Oranges. And where had all the blood come from? It was everywhere, and all over Merlin's dirty hands and torn clothing. He pushed the hobbled trolley along, looking for Arthur. Merlin didn't want the bloody sweets; they were Arthur's.

But where had Arthur gone? He'd left. Merlin was all alone and now there was that horrible screeching and wailing and all he had was a fucking shopping trolley and he was about to die horribly, or something worse.

The Infected screamed some more and they were saying his name. This was death, surely, when your killers knew your name and the sound of it ripped impossibly from their ravaged throats.

"_Merlin!_"

Merlin shut his eyes against the onslaught and then blinked, because he was lying on the ground in a tangle of blankets and Arthur was nudging at him with his foot.

"I—what?" he managed, struggling upright and yanking blankets savagely from under his legs.

"Beauty sleep is over, Princess; time to move on." Arthur smirked down at him infuriatingly.

"Yeah... alright." Merlin's head was full of cotton wool, but he gave it another moment and then the world began to make enough sense for him to get up, fold up his makeshift bed and stuff it in the back of the car. Everyone else was awake, especially Arthur, who'd taken the last watch after staying up with Merlin and still looked far too energetic for the early hour, the prat.

Merlin got the front passenger seat and saw that Arthur had finally wrested the keys from Morgana, who had hauled a blanket into the back seat to wad up as a pillow.

"No more beauty sleep for you, either, Morgana," Arthur said into the mirror as he started the engine. "It can only do so much."

She gave him the finger. Arthur laughed and then they were on their way, back onto the M5 and then onwards to Devon, for lack of a better plan.

Merlin had never been on a road trip of any kind, not having had any friends with cars before, but as the morning faded to afternoon and they drove southwest under gradually thinning clouds, trading easy banter and stopping for breaks in random, green meadows, he could almost imagine that this was what it would feel like. Anyone would think they were all lifelong friends, the way they were getting on; the girls laughed and joked with the boys as they played some unfathomable card game across the back seats and Arthur threw back witty retorts and pointed out interesting scenery as Merlin fiddled with the radio, listening to the static. Except for the fact that they seemed the last ones left in the world, he could almost forget, in these moments, that they were living in a Stephen King novel.

"_Merlin,_" Arthur said, in that particular way that had already been labelled as his _exasperated with Merlin_ tone, "why do you insist on playing with the sodding radio? Are you hoping there's a DJ somewhere in the country, holed up with his Clash collection and playing at pirate radio?"

Merlin shrugged, still twiddling the dial and keeping an ear on the endless white noise. "You never know," he replied. "Although I'm not much of a Clash fan. D'you think this DJ would take requests?"

Arthur chose not to dignify him with a response, possibly wisely. Merlin switched to the AM band. Hang on. Was that...?

He cranked up the volume until the hiss and pop of static tickled his eardrums, ignoring the chorus of protests that sprang up and slapping Arthur's hand away from the power button. "Shut up," he said, turning the tuner again very lightly.

And suddenly, through the hissing, came a man's voice.

"--st find us. Message repeats."

The car fell silent. Merlin realized belatedly that Arthur had also hit the brakes, and they were now idling in the middle of the motorway. After a short pause, the voice came through again, distorted but understandable.

"Salvation is here. The answer to infection is here. If you can hear this, you're not alone. There are others like you. There are fighters, other survivors. We are soldiers and we are armed. Our location is at the thirtieth roadblock on the A38, outside Plymouth in Devon. You must find us. Message repeats."

They let it play through one more time before Merlin reached out and turned the volume back down. No one spoke for a long time.

"Plymouth?" Morgana said finally, her voice sounding unnaturally rough. "Roadblocks... from all the people trying to escape to France."

"They had the right idea," Merlin muttered.

"Soldiers, though?" Gwen said. "Do we want to join up with soldiers?"

"Well, why not," Merlin said tartly. "They've got loads of guns and such, after all. Surely we'd be safer than on our own."

Arthur remained silent. Merlin cast him a questioning look and at last he opened his mouth.

"I agree with Gwen," he said, unexpectedly. "Our own plan was as good as any; I'm not being forced into military service."

"Who says you bloody would be?" Merlin demanded. "Maybe they just want to get us out, or give us a cure. He was talking about _the answer to infection_, Arthur." Merlin stabbed a finger at the silent radio. "You're mad if you don't think we should find out what that's about."

Arthur glared. Merlin glared back. The man was truly baffling.

Morgana leaned forward, between the front seats, to interfere in their contest of wills.

"Perhaps we should put it to a vote?" she asked lightly, looking between them. "Right. The answer to infection, versus hiding out ourselves in the country till all this somehow blows over. All in favour of the soldiers?" She raised her hand and both her eyebrows, looking round the car.

Merlin raised his hand smartly, giving Arthur his best challenging look.

In the back seat, Gwen's hand silently and slowly crept up into the air. Arthur saw her in the mirror and his face turned stony.

"Fine," he snapped, shifting into gear, "we'll go meet the fucking soldiers. See how all this ends." He put his foot down on the accelerator rather harder than was necessary, and they were off toward Exeter, where they would likely raid a corner shop somewhere for a map from there to Plymouth.

Merlin left the radio dial alone and settled back in his seat to bask in his victory. He was so pleased with himself that for a while, he nearly managed to ignore the fact that the friendly, carefree mood of earlier had deserted them.

***

"I think that's it up ahead, there." Morgana's words interrupted a long and thoughtful silence.

Merlin studied the map (torn and water-stained, and the only map to be had in Exeter, possibly—they'd searched four shops before finding it) and squinted at the blurry lines.

"Yeah, I think so," he said. "Keep on this street."

If he didn't know better, he'd have said Arthur couldn't hear him. He kept his eyes ahead and maintained the stony silence he'd been nurturing for the past three hours.

Merlin stifled a sigh and went back to fiddling with the map.

In another five minutes, they came upon the roadblock they'd been directed to. There had certainly been a military presence once: a ramshackle, corrugated-steel shed stood on a concrete pad several yards off the road, its sides covered in black and red graffiti, and there were military trucks and even a tank all parked around the barricades. The tale the scene told wasn't a good one, though, Merlin thought. The small, square windows of the shack were broken, dirty and spray-painted, along with the sides of the tank. One of the trucks had all the windows smashed and looked like it had burnt from the inside out, perhaps from firebombs, and another was missing all the tires on one side. The barricade—large, imposing concrete blocks—had perhaps been run into by a truck or five, because bits of it were shifted and a whole section lay crumbled as if a giant had kicked it.

The four of them looked round silently, wandering about and poking at bits of the abandoned battlefield. Finally, Merlin spotted the bodies that were the only thing missing from the tableau. A pile of corpses sat in the ditch behind the shack, weeds growing up through the spaces between them. Some wore civilian clothes and some wore fatigues, the green stained brown with old blood. He startled a raven from its lunch as he approached and it took off shrieking, scaring him badly. With a shudder, he turned away and there was another body, hanging improbably off the top of the shack, sprawled across its low-pitched roof. It stared back at him with one intact eye and its rotting mouth gaped like that of a fish, flies buzzing around it.

He swallowed back bile and jogged over to the others, who stood near the tank turret.

"Well," said Arthur, looking not displeased with the turn of events, "what shall we do now?"

Morgana looked mulish. "This is mad. There must be someone left here."

"Maybe they've moved?" Gwen tried, always the optimist. "Somewhere safer than the motorway? But surely, if they remember that their message is playing, they must come back now and then to look for people."

"Yes, I'm sure any minute now they'll come out of the trees with tea and biscuits," Arthur snarled. "It's been a month. Do you have any idea how improbable it is that we're even here? Even if any of these soldiers are still alive, we haven't a snowball's chance in hell that they're still looking for survivors. So let's—"

Morgana held up a hand to interrupt him. "Did you hear that?"

"What are you--"

"Oh Christ," Merlin said, realization sitting cold and heavy in his guts, "it was the door of the shack."

One of the Infected had already had time to circle around them and cut them off from the car; the other was on the other side of them, several steps outside of the now-open door of the shack, its head cocked to the side in a parody of curiosity and its sides heaving as it sized them up.

Merlin had left his bat in the boot of the car, wedged up against the rear seats. He flexed his fingers uselessly, feeling the absence of a weapon, and then spied the butt of a gun poking from the back of Arthur's jeans. Arthur's hands were out at his sides, tense but still, and Merlin wondered if he would have time to reach for it before the Infected in front of him grew tired of their staring contest.

He sneaked a look at the girls; Morgana had her taser out and aimed at the Infected nearer the car, subtly pushing the unarmed Gwen behind her. Both Infected shifted just a bit, looking as if they were sniffing the air.

A shot rang out.

Several more followed, kicking up stinging chips of rock from the pavement, and Merlin found himself belly-down on the ground before he knew what was going on. Arthur's hand rested between his shoulder blades.

"What the fuck?" Merlin yelled at him over the barrage, covering his head with his arms.

"Stay down!" Arthur shouted back.

The firing stopped and both Infected lay twitching in pools of their own, tainted blood before Merlin dared look up again. Arthur hauled him back onto his feet and left him to brush off the dust while he made sure the girls were alright. Merlin heard their voices dimly; his ears still rang from the crack of gunfire.

"All clear!" a gravelly, male voice called out.

Merlin looked up in alarm as five men wearing fatigues and carrying very large guns appeared from among the trees. They did not, he thought wildly, appear to have any tea or biscuits.

Arthur swore quietly, and Merlin turned to see that he'd appeared beside him once again. "Royal Marines," he muttered, just loud enough for Merlin to hear. "Fantastic."

Merlin didn't have time to ask how Arthur recognized their uniforms, because the marines were now upon them and their leader was directing two of his men to go shoot the dying Infected some more, presumably to make sure they wouldn't suddenly get up again, and then approaching him and Arthur with a smile on his face.

"Well, well, that was a spot of bother, wasn't it?" the leader said, grinning at Arthur. The name tag on his uniform said 'Blakely'. The patch on his sleeve had three chevrons pointing down and Merlin frantically searched his memory for any knowledge of what that meant.

"We had it under control, Sergeant, but thank you for your concern," Arthur said coolly.

Sgt. Blakely and Arthur proceeded to have a staring contest, and Merlin felt the testosterone levels rising steadily, until Morgana headed off the confrontation in her cool way.

"Look, Gwen," she cooed, "so many big, strong men in uniform, come to save us from a horrible end!"

She hooked her arm through Gwen's good elbow and smiled at Sgt. Blakely in a way that Merlin would bet had led a great deal of men to doing her bidding. It certainly seemed to be working on these men, from the besotted looks on their faces. Merlin wondered how long it had been since any of them had seen a woman.

"Gentlemen," Morgana continued, "please lead the way to safety."

"Right," Blakely said, visibly giving himself a shake. He unclipped a radio from his belt.

"Alpha to Base; we have made contact with survivors and will be bringing them in now. Two females and two males. Over."

As the soldier walked away from them, listening to his radio chatter back, Merlin had a handful of seconds to wonder why their genders would be significant information before he found himself standing alone in the road. The others were piling back into the car to follow the armoured truck that was just now rattling up the road to pick up Blakely and his team. Merlin took the chance to grab his cricket bat again and propped it against his knees in the passenger seat, taking comfort from the now-familiar texture of its leather grip.

He shot a sideways look at Arthur as they bounced along a rutted, muddy track behind the marines. His face was emotionless, both hands gripped the wheel tightly and his eyes faced forward, only rarely diverted by the scrape of tree branches along the sides of the car. He seemed even more tense, if that were possible. Why did he dislike the military so much, Merlin wondered, and come to that, how was he so familiar with it? Merlin supposed that perhaps he was denser than most about that sort of thing but he assumed that knowing how to read symbols of rank, never mind recognizing the Royal Marines from a distance, implied a familiarity. But he was too young to be in the military, wasn't he? Merlin squinted at him. He seemed twenty at the oldest. In the reserves? But then he would have been called out when the outbreak had begun.

A thought occurred to him. Was Arthur... thingy... when you left the army without permission... AWOL, that was it. Merlin furrowed his brows as he thought about it. It made sense, in a way. Perhaps he'd been in training, which would have explained his sort of Rambo behaviour and reflexes and such. And then for some reason he'd run away, and now he was afraid he'd be recognized and... arrested? Killed? Bugger, what did they do to deserters in this country? Merlin had no idea, but if Arthur was in fact on the lam from a military career then it seemed important that he say something about it.

"Er... Arthur," he ventured.

"Merlin." Arthur's gaze didn't stray from the windscreen.

"Are you..." He paused. Upon reflection, this was a silly idea. But then, Arthur already thought he was an idiot, so what harm was it? "Are you AWOL from the military?" he asked in a bit of a rush.

Daft he may have been, but Arthur finally looked at him, even if his expression suggested he thought Merlin had forgotten his medication.

"Am I... _no_, Merlin. I have never been in the Armed sodding Forces. What the hell are you thinking of?"

"I just. I thought. You never said what you did, and you seem terribly familiar with them. And hostile. That as well." Merlin felt his chin go up stubbornly and resigned himself to looking like an idiot some more.

Arthur sighed. "I was a student, alright? Reading political science."

"Not even the Reserves?"

"No."

"Cadets?"

"No, Merlin. Shut up."

Gwen reached forward to pat Merlin's shoulder reassuringly, and they abruptly bounced out of the forest behind the marines to emerge in a driveway, surrounded by overgrown, green lawns. A ridiculously large manor sprawled at the other end of the drive, which was marginally smoother than the forest track and had more trucks and several Jeeps parked along its length and at the widened, gravel-packed oval at its end.

As Merlin jumped out, bat in hand, he had a good look around. The estate had clearly been abandoned and taken over by the marines. The large patio overlooking the lawns had been fronted with coils of barbed wire, behind which sat several guns that looked large enough to shoot down an entire plane. They were all aimed at the distant trees.

As the soldiers jumped off of their truck, others from their unit spilled out of the house to join them. While several men went to gather up all their food to take inside (which admittedly gave Merlin a twinge), an older man with a scar on his face came over to meet them.

"Oh fucking hell," he heard, and turned to see Arthur frozen in place a step behind him. He had a wild look about him, like he might try running off and taking his chances with the Infected in the woods.

Merlin looked back at the old man. He didn't seem any more worthy of panicking over than any of the other fifteen-odd personnel now milling about the yard.

The man got within five steps (and Merlin could now make out that his name tag said, 'Penn') and then stopped dead, his mouth falling open in a distinctly non-scary way.

"Arthur?" he said.

Merlin raised an eyebrow.

"Father," Arthur said in a resigned sort of voice.

That was it; Merlin had gone deaf from all the shooting.

But then the man named Penn swept past Merlin to hug Arthur, and apparently he was Arthur's dad after all. It was gratifying that at least Morgana and Gwen looked as astounded as he felt.

"Arthur's got a dad?" Gwen whispered, coming up on Merlin's left and grasping his arm.

"And he's in the Royals?" Morgana added, from his right.

Merlin stared at the crown patch on Arthur's dad's sleeve, in the same place as Sgt. Blakely's chevron insignia had been.

***

Once the yard had cleared and the soldiers had finished appropriating all their things, in short order Arthur was dragged off by his father (who was a Major, because Merlin had listening skills, if not a ceaseless font of knowledge), possibly never to be seen again from the resigned look on his face, and Gwen and Morgana were taken shortly after to find the medic and have Gwen's arm poked at. Merlin was left standing aimlessly in the yard and so a grunt named Moore took it upon himself to give him the grand tour.

The decoration inside the manor had clearly once leaned toward opulence but had since been manhandled into looking more utilitarian. Expensive-looking wood floors were covered in green and grey and black weaponry and supply cases and other military trappings; furniture had been shoved into unused rooms or covered with drop cloths, and rugs had been rolled up and propped against walls and stacked on the furniture. Several sitting rooms at the front of the house were now barren and naked-looking, except for the crates stacked to the ceiling in places and two largish rooms that were now made up as barracks. Apparently the soldiers had chosen not to take up the undoubtedly numerous bedrooms.

They walked through this front area quickly as Moore gestured vaguely at the repurposed living spaces, his voice dripping with his disinterest. They hardly even paused to look around before they reached the back corridor and the kitchen. Moore pushed open the huge door and stuck his head in.

"Jones!" he shouted. "What's for tea?"

Jones called back something that Merlin couldn't understand from outside the door, but there was a great deal of laughter and then Moore walked into the kitchen, waving at Merlin to join him. The first thing that struck Merlin upon looking around the kitchen was the burly man in a pink, ruffled apron. He was mixing something in a bowl he held in the crook of his elbow. Three other men were standing around him, dressed more normally and chopping vegetables as they continued to laugh at him.

"That's Jones, our chief tin-opener," Moore said, pointing at the man in the apron, who did a little twirl as he turned to pick up an egg.

"Fucking terrible cook," he whispered conspiratorially in Merlin's ear. "Can any of you lot find your way round a kitchen?"

"Er," Merlin tried, thinking wildly. "Possibly Gwen... the one in the arm cast?" he clarified, off Moore's confused expression.

"Nice to have some women around again," Moore said, nodding. "Right then, let's get out of here before we share the blame for the disaster-in-progress. Let's go meet Mailor."

"Mailor?" Merlin asked, but Moore was ahead of him and seemed not to be paying attention.

They made their way further along the back corridor, past box after box of tins, and up a staircase to the outside. They were in a walled-in garden, which was mostly mud except for a shed at one end and had coils of barbed wire stretching along the top of the brick wall. Probably the soldiers had put that up, although Merlin couldn't really imagine why. Were the Infected very good climbers?

Moore led him to the shed, and as he reached for the door handle Merlin heard a loud banging and crashing from within. The whole building actually shook slightly.

"Are you ready to meet Mailor, then?"

Words would not line up correctly on his tongue for a moment, so he just stared. "Wha—is—d'you—Mailor's in the fucking _shed_?"

Moore raised an eyebrow at him and hauled the door open.

There was a rattle of chains and the distinctive screeching of the Infected as soon as the door swung open, and Merlin thought he must be mad to look inside but he did anyway.

Mailor screeched and lunged. Merlin had already run three steps backwards by the time he realized the Infected was chained up and could only make it halfway across the shed. Moore laughed loudly.

"No need to shit your pants; he's not getting out of there. Come on, then."

Moore's hand pushed in the middle of his back, shoving him toward the shed, but Merlin was having none of that, thanks.

"You've fucking lost it if you think I'm going in there!"

"It's quite safe; he's chained right up. Look," Moore said, walking inside himself to demonstrate. "Just stay near the door. He can only get halfway across. See, he's worn a rut in the floor."

There was a clear semicircle of scuffs in the wood that showed the limit of Mailor's chain. Against his better judgement, Merlin sighed and gingerly stepped into the gloom of the shed with Moore. Mailor screamed again and threw himself at them but immediately fell back choking, and Merlin saw for the first time that it was because Mailor's chain was fastened around his neck. He also saw for the first time that Mailor was (more or less) in the uniform of the Royal Marines, dirty and bloodstained and torn as it was. The Infected slumped back against the blood-smeared rear wall, his sides heaving visibly and a wild look in his red eyes, and he stared at Merlin.

"Why've you got an Infected soldier tied up in a shed, anyway?" he asked, tearing his eyes away to look at Moore. The wall at his back was solid and reassuring and he pressed his palms against it as he leaned back.

"The Major ordered it. We took him alive from back at the roadblock and chained him right up in here. Now we can study him and learn what we're facing."

"And what have you learned?" Mailor seemed to be dozing off, of all things.

Moore looked at his former comrade. "We've learned that Mailor's not in there anymore. He's gone and he won't be back. The thing that's left is a husk that knows nothing but rage and murder and will never have a future like Mailor had."

"So what's left to learn, then?"

Moore turned to leave the shed. "How long it takes an Infected to starve to death."

Mailor jerked awake a bit as they made their way out, but quickly went back to sleep. Or whatever that was.

***

Perhaps half an hour before teatime, Merlin was reunited with Morgana and Gwen in the foyer of the manor. They both smiled widely at him as they emerged from the other side of a vast staircase, and Gwen proudly held up her arm, now in a Velcro brace.

"I'm free at last," she said.

Merlin laughed. "Does it hurt?"

She stopped in front of him and braced her arm against her other palm as Morgana came up to stand to her right.

"There's no pain, but it itched like you would not believe when the medic sawed the cast off and all the air hit the skin again. I'm meant to be careful and not strain my arm until the flexibility is back, or I'll break it again, but this brace they've given me will help." Gwen grinned again and Merlin couldn't help noticing that the stress had melted from her face. He hadn't noticed the signs when they had been there, but now the furrow in her brow was smoothed out and she looked quite happy.

Morgana smiled indulgently at her and then reached out one graceful hand to settle on Merlin's elbow, drawing the rest of his attention toward her. "Have you seen Arthur, then?"

He shook his head. "I got the grand tour—they have a sodding Infected captive in the back garden, if you can believe that—but I haven't seen the prat yet. I suppose he's still chatting with his dad. They must have a lot to catch up on, right?" As far as Merlin could gather, they hadn't seen each other since before the outbreak and had likely assumed each other dead. He had a brief flashback to finding his own mum in her bed and swallowed hard, trying to redirect his thoughts.

"Oh, there he is," said Gwen, doing the job for Merlin.

He turned and there was Arthur strolling casually toward them, his hands jammed in his trouser pockets and his boots scuffing nonchalantly across the parquet floors. His face was a mask and his eyes flicked over the three of them, lingering briefly on Gwen, probably noticing her arm, and then settling last on Merlin's face.

"All right?" Merlin asked.

Arthur nodded and stopped between Merlin and Morgana, making them a circle.

"Cast came off all right?" he asked Gwen.

"Yeah, everything's fine there," she answered.

Arthur nodded again, maddeningly silent.

"Food's nearly ready, apparently. Come on, then, let's go to the mess." He inclined his head back the way he'd come, his hands still in his pockets, and they fell into line behind him, for want of something better to do.

The mess was a large room near the kitchens and obviously not the original dining room, although the long table in the middle undoubtedly had come from there. As they approached it, the noise of rowdy, hungry military men built upon itself until the door opened and Merlin didn't know if he could handle a whole meal of roaring at that level. There was some cheering and whistling added to the din as they found their seats, four clear ones in a row along one long side, directly across from a large, empty chair that probably belonged to Maj. Penn.

Merlin sat between Arthur and Morgana and looked at the array of food in front of him: plastic bowls of tinned peas and carrots, a platter of what looked like cocktail sausages, and a silver, covered dish that must have been a relic of the manor's former owners. He wasn't sure whether or not he wanted to know what it concealed.

The noise died down; Merlin turned to the door and there stood Maj. Penn in a red and blue dress uniform. He walked to his waiting chair with the bearing of a king among his subjects.

"Welcome," he said, standing at his chair and smiling round the room, lingering longest on Arthur, "to our guests. I understand that Jones has prepared something special in honour of your arrival."

He gripped the ornate handle on the dish cover and removed it with a flourish. Merlin leaned into Morgana's space to see what the special thing was.

"Omelet!" Penn said. "Jones, you've outdone yourself. Well, I was going to make a toast but a bite of this will do nicely." He picked up his fork and speared a piece of egg with bits of mushroom in it. "To our continued safety and survival."

Merlin watched him put the fork in his mouth and saw the instant his expression changed from expectation to horror. The look on the man's face made him swallow a smile; discomfort didn't suit his features. Penn spit out the egg into a napkin in a way that looked surprisingly refined. Decorum in all things, Merlin thought.

"Jones. These eggs are off."

Jones went pale. "I, er, thought the salt would disguise it. Sir."

Penn reached for water. "Get rid of it."

Two marines obeyed, picking up the rotten omelet with looks of loathing toward Jones.

"My mouth was all set for omelet, too," one of the marines near Merlin muttered.

The meal lasted another five, quiet minutes in which Merlin chased peas round the plate with his fork, under motherly disapproving looks from Gwen, and then a siren went off from possibly right under his chair, judging from the volume. It was all he could do not to throw the fork in alarm, he was so startled.

Arthur rose half out of his seat, looking questioningly at his father. The Major waved him back down.

"Positions, boys," he said calmly, taking a drink as the marines scrambled for the door, and getting up to follow them out as if sirens at mealtimes happened daily.

Morgana and Arthur were on their feet straight away, racing for the door, and with a simultaneous sigh, Gwen and Merlin went after. Frankly though, Merlin was fine with the end of that meal. He wasn't much for peas or silence during tea.

The siren stopped after another minute and was followed by rather a lot of gunfire. Arthur, naturally, was still heading for the front door, Morgana hard on his heels, because obviously running toward the guns was an excellent plan. Merlin skidded to a stop near the large staircase in the foyer, feeling Gwen at his shoulder, and saw Arthur and Morgana finally stopped, arguing with a marine who was blocking the front door with a very large gun. You didn't, Merlin thought, argue with a gun that size. But probably Arthur was trying to convince the soldier to let him borrow it or something else equally mad.

He couldn't hear the content of the argument anyway, over the shooting, so he wandered over to a large window instead to look outside. It had gone dark but muzzle flashes and floodlights trained on the lawns lit up the scene for him: a mob of Infected, ten or fifteen strong, was trying to rush the estate from the far tree line, and the marines were mowing them down with their assault rifles and their bloody enormous cannon-things.

With morbid fascination, he watched the battle go on. Most of the Infected seemed to fall after four or five hits, their skeletal, ragged bodies jerking with every explosive contact, but some ran on as if they were being hit with pebbles from slingshots instead of bullets, and it was these few that the cannon operator turned on with probable glee. An Infected in Merlin's direct line of sight was hit by it and—there was no other word for it—it exploded. Bits of carrion flew for several feet in every direction, hitting the other unstoppable Infected, who barrelled on as if nothing had happened. The remains, if there was enough still there even to call them that, fell to the grass almost gracefully. Merlin had once seen a woman in a film faint with that precise movement. At that thought, he had to turn away, his stomach churning as he shut his eyes against the bright lights and carnage outside. Now that his ears were growing used to the gunfire, he realized he could hear the loud, joyful whooping of the soldiers outside. He walked back over to Gwen, who was sitting on the stairs now.

"You look a bit green," she said.

"Yes. Funny. After all, I've seen worse in the last few days." He collapsed on the step next to her and put his head between his knees until his meagre tea stopped threatening to leave his stomach.

Gwen was frowning when he could raise his head again. "Well, I hardly blame you. This is all a bit intense, isn't it."

"Do you regret coming here?"

She shrugged. "Nothing's happened to regret, yet. We've only been here half a day."

Her wait-and-see attitude was somehow not comforting. Merlin was certainly having second thoughts. Then again, if a determined Infected could take five bullets without slowing down, perhaps they would all have died horribly that afternoon at the roadblock, armed with only their handgun and taser, had Sgt. Blakely not ridden in on his white horse to save them all.

Merlin put his head back between his knees until Arthur and Morgana rejoined them.

Morgana instantly put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Merlin, are you--" and the rest was drowned out by the banging of the doors as the marines poured back inside, loud with adrenaline and dusted with dirt and gunpowder.

"Fucking hell!" shouted Jones, once again accepted by his comrades. "I love it when they come out to play. Just...." He mimed shooting an apparently vast number of Infected and the three soldiers around him laughed, slapping him on the back.

Morgana snorted (and she hadn't even seen him in the frilly apron). Unfortunately, it attracted Jones' and Sgt. Blakely's attention from their discussion of Infected and guns and possibly steroids. Jones sauntered over, looking her up and down rather obviously as she crossed her arms over her chest and assumed a blank expression. Merlin thought that he didn't like the look of her blank expression.

"Morgana, was it? Were you watching us?" He sidled into her personal space and winked. "You like big... _guns_, do you?"

His mates all laughed and Merlin found himself beginning to stand. Gwen's hand squeezing his elbow made him sit again, though, and watch warily. Arthur sat on the stair below Gwen, his spine a taut line under his shirt.

"I don't know," Morgana replied smoothly, a smile with no humour in it crawling across her lips. "You seem the type to pull the trigger a little early."

The men laughed louder and Blakely stepped forward, shoving Jones aside.

"You heard her, Jones; step aside for a real man."

Merlin tensed up, his legs burning with the need to jump to his feet and Gwen's fingernails still digging through his jumper; Morgana's taser had appeared in her hand.

"You will not touch me," she said softly, looking pointedly at his hand wavering near her arm, "or I will apply this to your bollocks."

Blakely's face froze in shock for an instant, but in the next he was laughing so hard that Merlin might have just imagined it.

"This what you've been carrying?" he exclaimed, seizing it before she had a chance to avoid him and holding it back when she made a lunge after it. "It's a wonder you ain't dead already, love. Oh, don't you worry," he added, when she made another grab for it, "you won't be needing it now. I'll protect you. Won't I, boys?"

Morgana was obviously about to put her foot where she'd just been threatening to stick the taser, and Merlin moved to try and hold her off at the same time as Arthur surged to his feet, heading for Blakely. The marines witnessing the scene were still laughing and catcalling, and then Maj. Penn appeared in their midst.

"What in the name of God is going on here?" he thundered.

The marines shut up almost at once, drifting back as a unit and isolating Blakely, Jones and Morgana. Arthur and Merlin had both been shocked into stillness at the bottom of the stairs, a few feet away, by the sound of his voice.

Blakely immediately stood at attention, with Jones quick to follow. Merlin eyed Morgana eyeing the taser still in Blakely's hand, rigid at his side.

"Sir. Just a bit of fun, sir."

"Sergeant, what have you got there." The Major did not phrase it as a question.

Blakely didn't respond. Penn's eyes narrowed, and three seconds ticked by before he cracked like a bad egg and held the taser out for inspection.

Penn took it. "This is not military issue."

"It's mine," Morgana said curtly.

Penn levelled a glare at his troops that should rightly have killed them both on the spot, and then silently gave Morgana back her weapon. She checked the safety before stuffing it back in the pocket of her jumper, and then walked off without another word, Gwen jumping up to follow her.

The Major looked around at the scene: a squad of guilty-looking marines and Merlin and Arthur, both still unmoving. Merlin was still frozen in mid-step.

"Sergeant, what should you be doing right now?"

Blakely straightened a bit more, if that was possible.

"Sir! Checking the perimeter and clearing the bodies off the lawn, sir."

"Well then, get to it. Where is Lance-Corporal Lott?"

"Went ahead to the armoury, sir," a voice piped up from the crowd.

Penn looked toward the voice. "You and Moore will go and assist him, Smith." He looked around. "Why are you all still standing here?"

They dispersed at a remarkable speed. When Merlin, Arthur, and the Major were alone in the entryway, he finally allowed himself to sag fractionally and suddenly seemed more like Arthur's dad than a commanding officer.

"Come to my office," he said.

Maj. Penn's—Uther's—office was a study on the main floor with most of the original furniture still present, as far as Merlin could see. It was warm and wood-panelled. Once he and Arthur were seated in front of the desk, each with a finger of whiskey in a glass, the bottle of which looked like one of the ones they themselves had brought, Arthur's father sat in the high-backed chair behind the desk and rested his own drink on the paper-stuffed blotter.

"What, precisely, happened out there? Will your friend be all right?"

Merlin found himself nodding before Arthur had a chance to open his mouth.

"She'll be fine, I think, once she calms down. Sgt. Blakely and Pvt. Jones said some sort of inappropriate things and she didn't appreciate it, but it was nothing very serious." He paused. "She might kill the next person to touch her taser, though," he added.

Uther nodded, but frowned at him. "I see...."

"Merlin," he supplied, sipping at his drink. It tasted smoky and sharp at once and created some much-appreciated warmth when it reached his stomach.

"Merlin. Thank you." Uther shifted in his chair. "My boys are good boys; they just haven't seen women in a long time, and they all lost their wives and girlfriends, of course, and things are a bit strange for them right now. They should calm down soon enough but I'll have a chat with them about boundaries, all the same."

"That would be best," Merlin said. "Morgana has quite a temper."

Arthur swirled his drink, saying nothing. Merlin glanced at him from the corner of his eye. "Should I...?" he tried, half-rising and jerking a thumb toward the door behind them.

Uther gestured at his chair. "No, please sit. We should talk. For instance, what brought you here? Arthur was certainly surprised enough to see me when you arrived, so what was your purpose in coming?"

This, at least, was an easy one.

"Your radio message. You promised the answer to Infection," Merlin said. "It was difficult to resist."

"Yes, the message. Of course, this place is well-defended, and we have supplies enough to last a year at least, with our population. That's with very little rationing. Hot, clean water, even. That certainly feels like a luxury these days." He settled back in his chair. "We're quite glad to have you here with us, and I hope that you'll all be quite comfortable and safe, given the circumstances."

Merlin scrunched his brow, considering the words. So, no actual cure, then. Still, there was something to be said for showers and beds and a full night's sleep, wasn't there? He finished his drink and stood, sensing it was time for him to leave Arthur and his dad to bond a while, or whatever it was that fathers and sons did. With a nod of thanks to Uther and a grin for Arthur, he left to find his bed.

They'd been given a room each on the second floor, which was nearly empty since the marines were barracked in the large rooms he'd seen on his earlier tour. He didn't actually know which was his, as he hadn't been upstairs yet, but he followed a light from the corridor to find Gwen sitting on her bed, playing with her arm brace. She smiled at him as he wandered in.

"How's Morgana?" he asked.

She grimaced. "Went to bed. Still furious, frankly. I hope she's better in the morning."

He sat down beside her, feeling the expensive mattress dip slightly.

"Well, it was hardly an experience I'd wish for; I can't say I blame her. Arthur's dad said he'd have a talk with the men about keeping it in their pants or something."

"Oh, rubbing elbows with the officers already, are we?" she teased.

"He invited us for a drink," Merlin muttered. "In fact, a drink of stuff we brought with us."

Gwen laughed.

"So what's he like, then?" she said.

Merlin thought a moment, then shrugged. "As imposing as he seems from a distance, I suppose, but he relaxes rather a lot when he's not around his men." He scratched his ear. "He seems quite glad to have Arthur here."

"Well, naturally. Think if you were him. Arthur's his son, maybe his only child."

"Arthur's very quiet, though," he found himself saying.

Gwen cocked her head to the side. "Well, I think there's a load of history there."

Merlin looked at her quizzically and she stared back at him with a look insultingly close to utter disbelief.

"You really don't see it? He's got a chip on his shoulder about the military the size of...." At a loss for comparisons, she flailed expansively for a moment. "And he looked astounded to see the man standing there in front of him. Not in a good way, either. I certainly wouldn't stand there like a stick in a bog if _my_ father came back from the dead and gave me a hug. I had quite a good relationship with my dad," she said with a wistful smile.

Merlin had no response to that and found himself once again trying not to think about his mum. "I dunno," he said weakly. "Maybe it's shock."

"Maybe."

He stifled a yawn, feeling his jaw crack a little. "Hey," he said, "do you know where--"

She pointed at the wall. "Morgana's on my other side, so you and Arthur can fight over the two rooms on this side." She smiled. "Goodnight, Merlin."

"'Night, Gwen," he grinned, getting up to leave her alone. "See you tomorrow."

Peeking at both options, he chose the room beside Gwen's and quickly shucked his clothes for bed, crawling under the slightly musty but very soft duvet with a sigh. The bed in Morgana and Gwen's extra room seemed a year ago already, and frankly, he'd never slept in a bed this nice. He felt sure he'd drop right off to sleep until the sun shone again.

He heard Arthur shuffling around behind the wall perhaps an hour later.

Two hours after that, he was still staring at the shadows on the ceiling.

Merlin sighed.

He let several more minutes pass before throwing off the covers and pulling his clothes back on again, considering the trainers but deciding to carry them instead until he worked out where he was going; banging about audibly in the middle of the night in a house full of trained killers would probably be unwise of him.

The door mercifully didn't creak as he slipped into the corridor and tiptoed past Arthur's room, from which no snores or other sleep sounds emanated. Maybe Arthur was still awake, too, he thought. He kept moving, down the wide staircase, past the barracks rooms, and toward the back corridor of the house before he even realized exactly where he was going.

He tried to remember if the shed was locked or not as he paused to slip on his trainers at the door to the back garden. The moonlight outside illuminated the shed just enough to reassure him that there was no padlock, and he picked his way carefully across the soggy, muddy grass.

The creak of the shed door opening, although Merlin did his best to keep it quiet, disturbed Mailor from one of his sleep-like trances. The Infected awoke with a jolt as Merlin stepped inside and pulled the door shut, conscious that he had no weapon with him.

Mailor got to his feet quickly and took a breath to scream, to lunge, something, and so Merlin thrust his right hand out in front of him, palm toward his target, and focused all his attention on the thing before him (not a difficult task, honestly, as they tended to draw it anyway). With a deep breath of his own, he thought calming thoughts, hoping he was projecting them at Mailor.

Mailor froze as if someone had pressed a pause button, staring curiously at Merlin.

The realization that they probably wouldn't find his lifeless body on the floor of the shed the next day hit Merlin quite suddenly; his shaking knees finally gave out and he thumped to the floor, but his hand stayed out toward the Infected and it stayed stationary, obeying his command for calm.

He licked his lips and then dropped the hand. Mailor jerked, rattling his chain, and sniffed the air deeply. He put his palm back up again quickly, thinking more of calm and standing still, and watched in morbid fascination as the Infected relaxed again.

"Sit... sit down," he whispered softly, making eye contact, creepy as it was to stare down those beyond-bloodshot eyes. Mailor sat, slowly, looking as if he didn't know why or how he was doing it.

Merlin smiled.

***

"Merlin, for God's sake, you're going to be facedown in your breakfast in a minute," Arthur snapped, rousing Merlin from a fog of drowsiness. He jerked upright, his attention slamming back to the present, and realized he'd likely spent the last several minutes staring fixedly at Arthur's nose.

He dug his spoon back into his cooling porridge.

"Honestly, did you sleep at all?"

He had, in fact, remained in the shed with Mailor until the pearly grey of dawn crept up on him. Merlin had cursed a bit and left the softly dozing Infected to stealthily make his way back up to his bed for a few hours' rest, finally bone-tired. He'd managed two hours before Arthur was banging on his door and making noise about food.

Arthur, for his part, looked maddeningly like he'd spent the whole night sleeping like a baby, the bastard. Merlin jabbed his spoon upright into his flavourless mush and watched it topple in slow-motion to clatter against the rim of the bowl.

"Oh, Merlin, eat your food," Gwen chided him.

He knew that she was being the voice of sense and reason yet again, but continued to stare and poke at it for another several minutes until his friends were finished.

"What's on for today, then?" he asked, stuffing his hands into his pockets as they strolled out of the mess hall, dodging the soldiers milling about on their duties.

"I've been asked to sort out the kitchen and organize lunch," said Gwen.

"I'm helping," Morgana said brightly.

Arthur snorted. "You can cook, can you?"

She glared back. "Well... no. But I'm a champion with a knife." Her smile was the sweetly venomous one she seemed to favour.

"Morgana can chop vegetables with the best of them," Gwen said, "it's just the mixing and cooking bit that she seems defeated by."

Morgana crossed her arms smugly, as if this settled the matter with Arthur the clear loser.

"How about you, then?" Merlin said, nudging at Arthur with his elbow.

"My father wanted to see me," he answered. "I might spend the day with him."

And so Merlin was at loose ends. He debated going back out to the shed for a moment, but in the end he went back up to his musty bedroom for a long nap, instead. At least he had plenty of sleep to catch up on; somehow being in a coma hadn't been very restful.

***

Except for being thrown out of his bed by Morgana for lunch and then Arthur for tea, Merlin was staggered to realize on the way down for breakfast the next morning that he'd slept the better part of twenty hours in the past twenty-four. At least that explained why he felt slightly more alive. Arthur, once again bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and sharp-tongued, nevertheless only had two sarcastic comments for Merlin, one of them having to do with hibernation and the other merely being about his ears.

They trailed behind the girls as they left the mess and Merlin was pleasantly distracted by the idea of a walk about the grounds, followed by another nap, when he heard a commotion from the front of the house.

When a very loud, angry and female voice cut through the din, he and Arthur shared one brief look before taking off at a run.

The tableau was surprising and yet it wasn't: Morgana was in a standoff with Sgt. Blakely and appeared to have a short knife in her hand of unknown origin, possibly the kitchen. Gwen, her braced arm cradled against her chest, stood a pace behind her, where Morgana had likely shoved her out of the way. Gwen looked nearly as angry as Morgana, and clearly would not be the one holding her back from the murder she was about to attempt. Three other marines were ranged around Blakely, their faces unreadable.

"I am going to cut them off and stuff them down your fucking _throat_, and then I am going to _kill you_," Morgana hissed, shifting from foot to foot as she stared down Blakely, who unfortunately did not look a fraction as scared as Merlin would be in his place.

The sergeant smiled. "I like them feisty. I'll have you first, then."

Morgana made to lunge, bringing the knife in low in a scarily capable manner, and fucking Blakely even moved back a step, but two marines leapt forward and seized her arms, taking away her knife and forcing her to her knees. The third grabbed Gwen and Blakely stepped up close to Morgana with a smile on his face, even as she showed him all her teeth, and it was going to end so very terribly.

Merlin and Arthur rushed in to intervene and even as he ran for the man holding Gwen by her good arm, Merlin suddenly realized they had just picked a fight with Royal Marines who outnumbered them two to one, that he was unarmed, and that any muscle mass he had once possessed was long since deteriorated. Arthur, at least, had a better-than-nil chance of survival in this.

Two good things happened in the next minute: first, the man he was attempting to enter single combat with had to release Gwen to hit him, which allowed her to slip away, hopefully to somewhere very safe.

Second, another marine had appeared in the fray, and since he was shouting at Blakely, he was likely on Merlin's side. This, he thought as he dodged a punch, probably evened things up considerably.

Then Merlin's opponent, who apparently was a private named White, hit him in the jaw and everything went downhill from there.

Merlin staggered back, reeling from the pain, and tried not to fall over. White swung at him again and he ducked, taking a blow meant for his stomach on the shoulder instead, which still hurt like hell but he stayed on his feet. Instincts from a brief period as a teenage hoodlum kicked in and he landed two fast punches on White's stomach and the side of his ribcage before White, who had nearly 100 pounds on Merlin, caught his fist and squeezed, using it to push him to his knees as the pressure on his fingers became white-hot pain. Merlin gritted his teeth.

Morgana, who had apparently been able to escape her captors and also was not possessed of the good sense to run like hell, appeared behind White, grabbed his ear, and twisted hard with a look of malice on her face, until he cried out and released his grip on Merlin. Merlin decided that fighting with honour was right out the window and dove on White, taking advantage of his distraction to knock him flat onto his back, pin his arms under his knees, and start beating him round the head before he had time to react or fight back.

Morgana ran back to Arthur and Merlin looked up from his ministrations long enough to see that Arthur and the nice marine had knocked one of Morgana's assailants unconscious and were now brawling with Blakely and the other one. Blakely landed a punch on Arthur that knocked him several steps backwards, Merlin winced in sympathy, and then suddenly White had pulled an arm from under Merlin's knee and seized him round the neck, choking him.

Spots were blooming in his vision when Maj. Penn's strident voice cut through the fight, rendering everyone motionless.

"Blakely! Lott! What is the meaning of this?"

Merlin, wheezing, turned to face Penn. Their helper—Lott, was it?—stood at attention along with the other three marines who were still conscious. The fourth, damn him, seemed to be coming around as well.

"Sir," said L.Cpl. Lott, facing straight ahead and bleeding freely from a split lip, "the sergeant and these three privates were harassing—" He was cut off by Uther's imperiously raised hand.

"Sgt. Blakely," he said instead, "what happened here?"

Blakely gave Merlin, Arthur, and even the still-murderous Morgana a glare as he replied. "They attacked us unprovoked, sir."

Morgana made a choked-off noise and Arthur laid a hand on her arm. "Father," he started, but Uther silenced him as well.

"Where is the other one?" he asked, and more marines who had appeared on the scene pointed behind Merlin. He turned slowly, dreading, and there was Gwen, held between two more soldiers. Half of her hair had been knocked from its ponytail and hung in her face.

The major nodded to himself. "Sergeant."

Blakely stood at attention.

"Arrest these two and Lott." He gestured at Arthur, who stared at him in shock, and Merlin, who might have gasped if he could breathe without pain in his throat.

Morgana clenched her hands into fists, her face going stony, but she was seized again before she could move, and suddenly there were guns pointed at Merlin and urging him up to stand next to Arthur and L.Cpl. Lott. Moore, who was apparently a Corporal, and Blakely, who had a possibly-permanent smug look on his face now, stayed with them, guns trained, as everyone else filed away in a startlingly quiet manner, dragging Gwen and Morgana off with them to who knew where.

The major strolled over to them with a thoughtful look on his face.

"I promised them women," he said.

***

They had been left in a demolished toilet, Merlin and Lott chained to the enormous radiator along one wall and Arthur to a naked pipe that ran from floor to ceiling in the far corner. After the first hour, they'd all slumped to the floor and gotten as comfortable as they could.

"They're all fucking mad," Lott moaned. "All of them. Especially the major. The other sergeant, he blew his brains out a week ago, you know."

"How do you know you're not the mad one?" Arthur asked in a bored tone that made the hair stand up on Merlin's arms.

Lott glared. "Your own father's chained you up like a criminal for defending a woman from a bunch of animals, and you'll be dragged out and shot alongside us, as if _you_ were the animal. You tell me if I'm the mad one."

Merlin snatched his head up from the reverie he'd fallen into.

"Wait. Shot? Don't you lot do court-martials or something? You don't execute people anymore, surely." His voice rose a bit high by the end, but he was probably allowed some hysteria after the week he'd had, and being chained to a radiator.

Lott leaned back as if he were in a soft chair and not sitting on bits of broken tile.

"They've been shooting deserters and criminals since the end of the first week," he said dully. "There's a pile in the forest. You saw the bodies at the roadblock, didn't you?"

Merlin shuddered and Arthur looked pale.

"We'll be taken out at gunpoint and shot like dogs. And your friends...." He didn't finish that thought and Merlin was glad for it.

Lott laughed, without a trace of humour.

"Penn thinks there's a way out of this for any of us. That we'll get through somehow, that it's global. There's no fucking way. No one's come to help this country and you know why?" He shifted, rattling bits of tile. "They've fucking quarantined us. A little island: what else would they do? They're waiting for us all to die."

"Perhaps," Arthur said finally, "but that's no reason for us to die like this or for Gwen and Morgana to suffer. How can we get out of this?" He asked Lott.

Lott shrugged. "It'll probably be Blakely and Moore, maybe one more. We might be three against two, but we're in restraints and they'll be armed."

Arthur frowned thoughtfully. Merlin shifted in his seat, trying to ease the chafing of his wrists in the handcuffs. It might be wise to prepare for death, he thought.

He had about half an hour to do so, in the silence of their makeshift cell, before Blakely and Moore predictably trooped in, their rifles at the ready. It was, he thought, not enough time to do it properly. Blakely stood watching them, finger on the trigger, while Moore freed them all from the fixtures and then there was a gun barrel digging in between Merlin's shoulder blades as they were herded into the corridor like sheep, their hands bound in front of them.

Jab, jab, jab went Moore's gun in his back as they went down the stairs, out into the overcast and cooling outdoors, past the car still parked in the drive and onto a distressingly well-worn path into the forest. They rounded a bend and there was the scatter of fly-ridden, rotting corpses Lott had described, another twenty yards away. Already at this distance, the stench of death coated Merlin's throat and he gagged, just a little.

Arthur and Lott were right in front of him, and he looked up from his stumbling feet in time to see them nod at each other, just slightly. He raised an eyebrow; what was that about?

Blakely called a halt when they reached the pile. "Turn around," he said. "I want to see your faces when I stick you like pigs."

"A bayonet?" Lott cried. "You don't even have the decency to shoot me, you fucking prick?"

"I'm your superior officer," Blakely said.

"Suck my cock," Lott spat.

As they turned, Arthur caught Merlin's eye and raised an eyebrow, probably trying to give him a significant look. Merlin didn't get it, and raised an eyebrow back, hoping his face showed confusion and not some accidental take on, 'yes, I understand completely.' From Arthur's eye-roll, he succeeded in that.

Merlin switched his attention to Moore and Blakely just in time to see Lott raise his arms, handcuffs rattling, and run screaming at them both, spittle flying like a madman. They both stared at him, raising their weapons.

"Merlin, run!" Arthur shouted, before running for the trees.

Merlin looked round quickly and dove into a mass of bodies, holding his breath and praying that no one had seen him and he wouldn't vomit. Lott's scream of rage turned to one of pain as the guns were fired repeatedly. Then there was quiet. Merlin strained to use his peripheral vision and saw Blakely whirl on Moore.

"They've fucking run off now, you stupid cunt! I can't believe you let _Lott_ outsmart you!" he shouted.

"Should we find them?"

"_Yes_, we should bloody find them! The major will have us out here in cuffs next if we don't!"

They both turned away and Merlin seized his chance to roll to his feet and slip into the woods. He moved quickly and quietly over the wet leaves and less than a minute later, heard Blakely order Moore to search the corpses, which was followed by a barrage of gunfire, likely aimed at the corpses.

Merlin kept moving, aiming deeper into the trees as he made his way around to where Arthur had gone. They met in front of a mossy, stone wall. It was crowned with razor wire.

"Still in one piece," Arthur whispered. "Not bad for an idiot." He nodded upwards. "Over we go."

Merlin looked up. "You go first."

Arthur rolled his eyes and reached up the wall, stretching the chain of his handcuffs as he climbed the juts of stone like a monkey. At the top, he paused, his hands gripping spaces on the top, and then did a neat flip that launched him over the deadly-looking coils. There was a thump on the other side. Merlin sighed and moved over to where Arthur had climbed up.

The ascent was thankfully nearly as easy as Arthur had made it look, if he tried to follow the same path. When he reached the top, though, it was trickier. Frankly, he didn't think he could execute that tidy flip without leaving half of his skin and organs decorating the top of the wall. Finally, with some manoeuvring, he got one foot up alongside his hands and leaped over the shiny coils, muttering a prayer to anyone listening as he did so. His arm caught a barb on the downward side, rending the thick fabric of his jumper and slicing his skin so neatly that he felt nothing for several seconds. But then he was hanging on the outside of the wall by a sleeve that refused to tear all the way, dangling two feet above the ground with both arms caught above his head, with blood running ticklishly down to his armpit as the pain set in.

Arthur sauntered over and looked up at him with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Merlin."

"Shut the fuck up and help me down; I'm bleeding."

Surprisingly, Arthur did. Merlin's sleeve bunched up and caught on the handcuff (which was digging into his skin and pressing against the bones of his hand in a horrible way), so it had to be torn lengthwise from the razor wire tears, and then Arthur was forced to rip the entire jumper off to free Merlin.

Merlin had never been gladder to touch the ground. He rubbed at his wrists as the cuffs slid back to a less uncomfortable position. There was blood all over the fucking place, and Arthur swooped in to seize his arm before he could so much as flinch.

"I don't think we'll have to amputate," he said after a moment, holding the arm up to the grey daylight, and Merlin wasn't sure if that was a joke or not.

"Hang on," Arthur said, and then ripped the sleeves clean off his own button-down shirt, awkwardly tearing them into strips to get past his cuffs and then wrapping them around Merlin's arm. "It's not clean, but it should keep you from leaving a trail of blood," he said, patting Merlin's shoulder. "Let's go."

And with that, Arthur trooped off away from the wall and into the woods.

Merlin stared after him a moment in pure disbelief. There were Infected in those woods. And the sky was turning the colour of a bruise; it was going to piss an unholy amount of rain. The Infected were going to come _out_ of the woods and murder them horribly. Arthur ignored Merlin's unvoiced but perfectly sane arguments and kept stumbling stubbornly through the trees, pushing aside leafy branches with both hands as he went. Merlin sighed and followed.

"Where are we going, anyway?" he asked when he'd finally caught up, narrowly avoiding tripping headlong into the dirt a few times on the way.

"Back to the roadblock," Arthur answered. "There should be something there to get the cuffs off with."

"We're going back for Morgana and Gwen, right?"

"Of course we're fucking going back. But we need a plan, first, or we'll just have put off our deaths a bit."

Merlin was silent for a moment. "Lott's dead," he said finally.

"Yes." And _there_ was a voice devoid of emotion.

"Did you two plan for that to happen?" Merlin asked, remembering their silent conversation of nods.

"He chose to sacrifice himself for the cause, yes. It won't have been in vain."

Probably, Merlin thought, Lott's choice to die had been at least slightly selfish. He didn't know, of course, but he thought it would be difficult to join a revolt against your own unit, against men you'd risked your life with. That, and Lott had been slightly madder than he'd claimed, but Merlin was going to keep that thought to himself.

They walked on, Merlin jumping at every shadow and rustle of leaves that didn't sound like them, but no Infected showed themselves, even as the rain started, gently for now. Eventually they stumbled out onto a road and discovered that they were several hundred yards down the road from the roadblock. They made for it, and Merlin noticed that they were sticking close together as if by unspoken agreement, and he decided that was alright with him as he scanned the tree line for movement.

The shack door stood open as it had been left, but Merlin couldn't stop himself from running over to check for Infected inside, anyway. It was empty, so if any were lurking, they had to be in the tank or in the trees. He walked back over to Arthur, who was kicking at rocks with a look of concentration.

"What--" he started, but Arthur picked up a large stone with both hands and pointed with his boot at another on the ground.

"Lay your handcuff chain across that," he said.

Merlin should have asked why, but he didn't, and then he was rapidly pulling his head back as Arthur brought his stone down rather hard at Merlin's hands, and Merlin had to force himself not to yank his hands away reflexively as the stone met chain and stone with a noise that made the hair stand up on his arms.

A few more swings and several deep breaths from Merlin later, Arthur had managed to shatter one of the links, freeing one cuff from the other. Merlin sat back on his heels, pulling his hands apart and swinging the ends of chain around.

"Bit too bondage for me, I think," he said thoughtfully.

Arthur rolled his eyes and set down his stone to wipe sweat and rainwater from his brow.

"Okay, your turn," he said after a moment, laying the chain of his handcuffs carefully across the wet and battered rock on the ground. "Try not to miss."

"Thanks much, you twat," Merlin muttered, grabbing the hammering rock and raising it up several inches above his target, closing one eye to aim.

The rock slipped a surprising amount when he brought it down, and although it hit the chain, it also bounced off wildly and he nearly hit his own knee. Arthur snorted, and Merlin spared him a glare before trying again, more carefully.

It took more hammering to break Arthur's cuffs than it had Merlin's, which Arthur pointedly did not comment on and which Merlin was willing to attribute to his own cuffs having been of inferior quality. At any rate, they were both freed now and the rain was beginning to show more promise of the torrential downpour Merlin was expecting, so they ducked into the shack to work out a plan. The shack smelled vile, possibly because of the body still on the roof, so Merlin hoped their plan would come together quickly.

"If we go in as we are, we won't last five minutes," Arthur said, "even if Blakely has reported us dead. We need some kind of distraction to allow us to go find the girls and free them from wherever they're being held."

Merlin nodded; knowing Morgana, wherever they were being kept was well-fortified and utterly free of anything that could be used as a weapon.

"I'm open to suggestions," Arthur complained.

Merlin widened his eyes. "What, Rambo needs help now? You haven't got a secret weapon cache round here anywhere?"

He got the vee for that one, deservedly, and settled down to think. The stench in the shack seemed to get worse as the rain came down harder.

Then he smiled, slowly, enjoying the slightly worried look that appeared on Arthur's face at that.

"I think," he said, "I have it."

"What?"

Merlin shook his head; he dared not explain. "You go in and find Morgana and Gwen and leave the distraction to me."

Arthur stared at him. "What the fuck are you planning? You will _not_ be getting yourself killed, after all this!"

The anger was frankly flattering. "I'll be fine," he said. "Just get yourself a good weapon and get in and out as fast as you can, and everything will be fine. If you can find some keys for a getaway vehicle, too, that wouldn't go amiss."

"Starting a shopping list, are you," Arthur muttered, but he was already going back outside, so Merlin allowed himself a brief, smug expression as he followed Arthur back into the rain.

Merlin found a pry bar and Arthur a rusty tire iron to serve as weapons and the trip back through the woods to the house seemed much faster, and although Merlin spent the whole journey clutching his pry bar and waiting for an Infected to run screaming at him from behind a large tree, none appeared. At the wall again (a different stretch, for there was no jumper to be seen hanging from the wire at the top), they split up with only a nod, Arthur making for the front of the house as Merlin ran toward the back garden.

He thanked whoever might be listening for the rain as he climbed the wall again and began flattening the wire with his pry bar, because it was now coming down so hard that he would never be seen from a distance, even if someone were looking for him. It was, however, making his grip terrible, and he nearly plummeted to the ground while trying to boost himself up to the top of the wall; he saved himself with his torn and bloody arm and was rewarded with a jolt of searing pain.

The ground on the other side was soft mud and he rolled on impact, coming up a uniform shade of brown. Merlin shook his dripping fringe out of his eyes and looked round; he was, thankfully, already in the back garden and no one was there to shoot at him. He made for the shed at a jog, the mud sucking at his trainers. Mailor hissed softly at him as he opened the door and stepped inside, leaving a wet trail behind him.

He raised a palm and the Infected marine calmed, staring tranquilly at him as he edged closer, holding his weapon in a death grip.

"Easy there," he crooned, trying to forget that he was talking to a zombie as one talks to a skittish horse. "Easy...."

He slipped around behind Mailor, to the scraped and bloodstained rear wall where his chain was bracketed to cement, and took the pry bar in both hands. Steadfastly projecting calm, steady thoughts, Merlin stared at Mailor with his iron bludgeon held in front of him, waiting for a sign that the Infected was no longer under his thrall. Mailor kept staring, his eyelids drooping, and so Merlin took a deep breath and turned away to pry the chain loose from the wall.

After a few moments' struggle, he broke a rusty link near the join and Mailor jerked as the end of his chain hit the floor, unused to the slack. He looked at Merlin, his nostrils flaring, and Merlin hurriedly put a palm up again.

"Go," he said.

Mailor went.

***

The shed was probably the safest place on the estate but after waiting ten minutes, Merlin ventured back out into the rain and made his way to the house; the rain washed the mud from his skin but only made his clothes and makeshift bandage worse, and by the time he made it indoors again, the water was running off his clothing and the slopping noises his jeans were making made it difficult to be stealthy. He crept along as best he could.

Mailor had started in the kitchen; Jones lay on the floor next to the counter, with his limbs splayed around him and a butcher knife sitting several inches away from his outstretched hand. A bowl of peas had been upended all over him and they had rolled as far as the doorway.

Moving toward the front of the house and keeping to the copious shadows (for there were no lights running during the daytime even when they were needed; the generators had more important uses), he came across the remains of two more soldiers. One of them was still clutching his gun in death; perhaps he had used it and Mailor had shrugged it off, or perhaps it had failed him, but he was dead anyway, his throat ripped open. The other body was missing its head; Merlin stepped closer and saw that it was Pvt. White, but he didn't care to look for the head.

He hesitated for a moment, fighting with himself, but after a moment started patting down White's corpse. He turned up a knife in its sheath and finally White's sidearm. He checked the safety (damn Arthur anyway for teaching him things he hadn't even wanted to learn) and then stuffed it down the back of his sodden jeans, feeling faintly ridiculous about it but glad for the extra weapon. Hopefully it was loaded; his lessons had only gone so far. Impulsively, he also clipped the knife to his belt before moving on.

Another body lay in the entry to the supply room, gored but still in one piece. He stepped over it to scout the room and found Morgana's Maglite and near that, their car keys.

"Of all the bloody luck," he murmured, pocketing the keys. The torch, though, he ended up leaving. It would likely draw too much attention to him and he was better off using his night vision, such as it was.

He took a deep breath. Up the stairs, then.

He was two steps from the top when he heard the telltale screeches that indicated Mailor was nearby—probably too near by for his comfort, strange abilities or no. He listened harder, straining his ears to hear around the rush of blood in his own veins, and then he nearly gasped out loud.

There were definitely two Infected up there.

It shouldn't have been a surprise, really, but it wasn't exactly good for Merlin, either. There was a human shout, male, from farther down the corridor, followed by a thump. He crept up to the landing and slipped into the first room available, Arthur's bedroom, only to be assaulted by the sound of harsh breathing.

"I got no bullets," the man hissed. He was cowering in the corner behind the door.

Merlin shut the door softly behind him. "Shut up," he hissed.

"Are—are you going to help?"

Merlin crossed to the window and pushed it open, letting in gushes of rain that soaked the drapes as he leaned out into the night. There was a short roof just below, hopefully a sturdy one. He looked back at the marine in the corner. He sort of hoped that it was Moore.

"No. No, I'm not."

An anguished wail from the man and the bang of the door hitting the wall followed Merlin out into the night.

He raised his face to the rain; he was so thoroughly wet that the storm was beginning to feel pleasant, and the flickers of lightning in the distance made him smile a little. Holding the pry bar out for balance against the slippery pitch of the roof, he half-crawled his way along the side of the house, passing two windows and peeking into the last, the room where Morgana had slept.

Mailor was inside, along with another freshly infected soldier. He ducked quickly out of the way and hoped they didn't see the movement.

He was, however, running out of options. The ledge he was on disappeared back into the wall only two feet away, and there was nothing back the way he'd just come. But another flash of lightning, slightly brighter, illuminated a trellis that climbed the bare wall. He looked up; yes, a jut of moulding against the bricks that he could just hang onto, and more windows above, on the third storey.

He had to leave the pry bar, but he jumped onto the trellis and climbed. A section broke off under his foot, dropping him several inches, and his fingers dug into the wet, splintering wood, but it held until he reached the ledge above, and he gripped the moulding for dear life as his toes scrabbled for purchase on the bricks, edging his way along to the nearest window. It would have to be safe in the room beyond, or he was going to die.

Merlin missed his pry bar immediately, because the window was closed and the pane of glass whole. Perhaps the butt of the gun... but could he reach it, in the back of his trousers, without falling, and would breaking the glass attract someone who wanted to kill him?

His fingers began to slip and panicked him into action. Pulling on some yet-untapped reserve of strength (adrenaline, he thought wildly, was _magical_), he hauled himself up to lean an entire forearm on the moulding, gripping with every inch of skin he thought he could, the edge diggging into a nerve in his arm, and pulled his head up to peek over the windowsill and inside the room as he groped behind him for his gun. There was no movement inside, so he ducked his head and swung the butt of the gun with his free hand, as hard as he could without knocking himself off the side of the house.

The window cracked with two hits and the third shattered it, making a wretched noise and leaving horrible-looking shards sticking up from the bottom of the frame. Merlin could have cared less, and merely knocked out one particularly large and scary piece before throwing his already-perforated arm over the ledge and dragging himself inside.

There was a worrying moment where he thought he'd end up facedown in the glass shards that covered the carpet but he managed to stay on his feet. He brought the gun up, watching the door, but either it was locked or no one was on this floor, because no one burst in to kill him. Anyway, the safety was still on, he realized, and he lowered the gun, feeling his cheeks go hot, and put it back in his waistband.

A noise reached him, either Gwen or Morgana, and whoever it was, she was not happy. Merlin considered the gun again but finally drew the knife instead, carrying it down by his side as he eased the door open. He paused in the hallway and listened some more, and there it was again: one of the girls was making noises of struggling. It was easy now to move like a ghost, all of his senses trained on the corridor around him: the smell of his own blood as it dripped down his arm, the bandage now dirty and soaked and useless; the crunch of bits of glass stuck to the soles of his trainers as they were ground to powder under his weight; the glint of the knife blade as flashes of lightning reflected from it in the darkness.

The door to the room was open and the soldier's back was to him as he held a hand over Gwen's mouth. She looked like she was trying to bite him. The element of surprise made up for the weight difference between them as Merlin slung an arm around the man's neck and yanked him off her, throwing him to the floor. The air rushed out of Blakely's lungs as his back hit the hardwood and Merlin felt a smile tug his face in an unnatural way as he knelt down and drew the blade across Blakely's white throat.

Gwen, endless font of strength that she was, watched with a calm expression from the wall as the sergeant gurgled to death. Merlin grabbed the handgun from the man's shoulder holster.

"Here." He handed it to her. "You should get outside, and be careful. Arthur and Morgana?"

She stared at him for a moment as if he had just spoken in tongues.

"You, you're not coming? But it's, I mean, it's _dangerous_, not that I don't think you can handle it, from the looks of things, but, well. You look like something the cat dragged in. A bit. Are you sure you're alright alone? With your arm, I mean; it's bleeding all over the floor!" She flailed at him, at the blood he felt running down his arm with the rainwater. "Shouldn't we stick together?"

Merlin smiled, warmly this time, feeling it in his extremities, and dug in his pocket to toss her the keys he'd grabbed.

"Start the car, Gwen. And lock yourself in," he added. "Now. Have you seen Arthur and Morgana?"

"We were separated by some Infected downstairs," she said, still looking worried. "Merlin, are you sure--"

He held up a hand, still smiling, and stepped over Blakely's legs to stand in front of her. "Go, Gwen. I'd rather someone live to tell the tale than all of us die."

She looked down. "You think there'll be someone to tell?"

"There must be."

She left, going back the way Merlin had come to reach the staircase, and Merlin followed shortly after, darting down the hall with the knife still in hand, turning the lightning red now.

He was searching the frontmost room, a large games room with a ripped and dusty billiards table, when the door slammed open behind him and Arthur barged in. His gun was already drawn as Merlin whipped around in surprise and they stared at each other for a full minute. Recognition flickered on Arthur's face at about the same time as Merlin was able to identify him, but he didn't lower his gun. All of a sudden, Merlin realized how he must look: wet, dirty, bloody and wild-eyed, with his chest heaving from exertion. He licked his lips, eyeing the barrel of the gun that was pointed steadily at his chest.

"Arthur," he said, and his voice came out scratchy. He dropped the knife and slowly raised his hands, and thank fuck, Arthur lowered the gun.

"Merlin," he said, "I thought you'd died, you insane bastard."

Merlin had no response to that, so he tried a smile, and Arthur swooped forward and hugged him.

Arthur was still wet too, and a little bloody and scratched himself, but warmer than he had any right to be, and Merlin felt the last dregs of manic energy ooze out of him and gave in at last, clinging for dear life. Arthur's hold just tightened more and his breath tickled Merlin's neck.

He shut his eyes against the world, and for a long moment, Merlin just concentrated on the skin contact and breathing in and out. He was not wet or cold or bleeding or going into shock, and Arthur was softly nuzzling his neck and making him smile in a way he never had, small and privately.

Then Arthur's hands shifted against his back and he mumbled something into Merlin's collarbone that sounded like 'idiot', and Merlin relished the scratch of stubble on his cheek as lips dragged slowly up his jaw and sought his own.

They were still for a moment, breathing each other's air and perhaps getting used to the feeling (Arthur's lips were chapped and bitten a little and Merlin couldn't deny that it felt perfect just then), but finally they moved, sharing soft, experimental kisses. Merlin slid his hands up Arthur's biceps, feeling the play of muscle under skin as he felt his way over Arthur's shoulders to his long, tan neck and up, to bury his fingers in Arthur's tangled hair. Using his advantage, he tugged Arthur's head to a better angle to slide his tongue between the rough, parted lips and then everything abruptly shifted gears and Merlin felt the backs of his legs hit the pool table and Arthur's hands up the back of his shirt as they kissed like they'd just invented it.

If he could climb inside Arthur's skin then perhaps he would get warm, Merlin thought as their tongues slid against each other and they pressed as close together as they could. He sat on the table a bit, hoping it wouldn't collapse, and hooked an ankle around the back of Arthur's calf to pull him, stumbling, closer. Arthur laughed into his mouth and redoubled his assault, nibbling at Merlin's lips and trying to touch every inch of his back and ribs under his shirt. Merlin settled for messing up his hair a bit more in return, and while he couldn't speak for the shock and the likely PTSD just then, he figured he was starting to warm up just fine on his own. His only shivers now were from the gentle slide of fingertips against his side.

His knee had gotten between Arthur's thighs and he pressed forward, his leg rubbing against Arthur's groin. Arthur moaned into his mouth and as if someone had just slammed a door, Merlin was jerked back into the present. He broke off the kiss, shoving Arthur away from him or himself away from Arthur, and instantly regretting it when he saw the confused, flushed look on his face.

"This," Merlin said, panting a little, "is completely neither the time nor the place."

Arthur sighed, nodded and backed off, running his fingers through his fantastically messy hair as Merlin stood up and straightened his clothes.

"Come on, then," Arthur said, making for the door but shooting Merlin a look that suggested he had better brace himself when they reached the right time and place.

Merlin shivered again.

***

Morgana was on the second floor, leaning against a wall in the corridor, and her taser was out as they approached. She recognized them, though, and put it away. The sky outside was lightening a bit as the rain let up, and the inside of the house was now merely dim instead of dark.

She looked between them. "Where's Gwen?"

Arthur looked sideways at Merlin.

"Outside, in the car, I hope," Merlin said. "Are there any Infected nearby?"

Morgana shook her head, and Merlin saw that she had a blackening eye. "I think they've all gone down to the main level or outside by now. I haven't seen or heard anyone at all for a while." She smiled. "I'm glad to see you're both alright."

She looked between them and Merlin frowned a little. He sneaked a glance at Arthur and saw him clearly for the first time since their passionate clinch: his lips were puffy, his hair was still a hopeless mess despite the finger-combing, and he was in fact standing somewhat in Merlin's personal space, which Merlin hadn't registered.

He looked back at Morgana, whose smile widened before she turned on her heel to lead the way downstairs and to freedom.

"Off we go, then, boys. Our chariot awaits."

He fought back a blush as they followed her, Arthur's arm occasionally bumping against his as they descended.

A faint scream echoed from somewhere behind them, audible now that the storm was beginning to blow away, but except for one brief flash of movement to his right that Merlin prayed he'd imagined, the three of them made it to the front door without encountering anyone still alive.

The rear lights of the little blue Fiesta glowed invitingly from where it waited on the drive, pointed toward freedom, and Merlin thought he'd never seen anything so wonderful. They stepped out into the open, into the rain that was merely a light shower now and dampened Morgana's hair into curls, and it was all he could do not to grab Arthur by the hand and drag him at a run all the way down the stairs and to the car. The three of them still seemed to share a thought, though, because they jogged the entire distance, smiling at the crunch of gravel and the rain on their faces. Merlin led the way round to the driver's side, where Gwen sat with both hands on the wheel.

"Have you locked the doors?" Merlin asked.

Gwen looked at him sideways and her face was drawn and ashy-looking through the rain-streaked glass. She looked like she wanted to say something but couldn't.

"Gwen?" Morgana said.

The rear window descended; Gwen's hands remained visible on the steering wheel.

And it was no wonder she looked petrified, because Maj. Penn had a gun pressed against the back of her seat, ready to shoot her through the chest from behind.

Arthur went rigid beside him.

"You killed my boys," Penn said softly, with bewilderment. "My own son. You killed them; you set that animal on them and it ripped them limb from limb. My _boys_."

"Father," Arthur started, and Penn pointed the gun at him instead. His arm was as steady as his voice was not.

"Shut up. _Shut. Up._ They were protecting you. I only wanted to protect you. And you have destroyed me."

Merlin couldn't stop the words from coming out of his mouth. "You tried to kill your own son!" he shouted, pointing an accusing finger at the madman with a gun, because he had no sense, just as Arthur kept telling him. "You had him taken out to your... your _boneyard_, and he was going to be shot dead for protecting his friends from that pack of lunatics! Lott was right; you've gone mad beyond rescue!"

The gun moved from Arthur to him, which was a terrifying relief.

"Merlin, you idiot," Arthur hissed, "he'll shoot you."

Merlin looked to Gwen, who hadn't moved. She was biting her lip and he could see the whites of her eyes.

"It was you, wasn't it," Penn said. "You've turned my son against me."

"I was turned against you years ago," Arthur said quietly, rage burning under his tone. "You aren't my father anymore. I don't know what you are."

"You _insolent, traitorous_..." The major trained the gun back on Arthur, and Merlin got a shove to the shoulder that sent him flying just as a gunshot shattered the air.

"_Morgana!_" came a scream from Gwen, and Merlin pushed himself upright to see Morgana lying crumpled on the gravel in front of Arthur, clutching her stomach as a puddle of red formed around her.

"She jumped in front of me," Arthur said, his voice very small and distant as Merlin crawled over to where Morgana lay. He brushed her wet hair from her face; she was still breathing, and she blinked up at him and smiled a bit, like the madwoman she so obviously was.

Arthur dropped to his knees beside Merlin, breathing hard, and a loud revving from the car made Merlin's head snap up in alarm. He watched wordlessly as Gwen reversed the car straight back to the edge of the drive and then onto the grass, stopping at the stairs. Where Mailor and another infected marine were standing, blinking up at the rain and at them.

Mailor saw the car stop and immediately rushed forward, putting a powerful fist through the back window. Merlin could just hear Maj. Penn's screams as the two Infected reached through the broken window and yanked him out by the lapels. They had him out as far as his legs when Gwen hit the gas again to drive forward, and he dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes, still screaming. Merlin looked away.

Morgana, whose head was now in his lap, was trying to speak, and the edges of her mouth stained red with her blood as she tried to draw breath. He shushed her, stroking her hair, and so instead she reached to take his hand in hers, heedless of the blood, and grabbed for Arthur with the other. Her point, he thought, was well-made.

Arthur's fingers tightened around hers. "I knew you were fucking mad," he whispered.

Gwen emerged from the car and collapsed to the ground on Morgana's other side, shaking. Morgana smiled up at her as well, and then with one last squeeze to Merlin's hand, she was gone.

***

Merlin woke up to sun on his face and squinted, throwing an arm over his eyes.

"Have you let her take the fucking curtains, as well?" he growled.

Arthur made a noise into his pillow that suggested he wasn't listening to his perfectly legitimate complaints. Merlin poked him in the side and he jerked awake, glaring.

Merlin just pointed at the rare winter sunlight that was streaming in to warm the mattress.

Arthur looked up muzzily, rubbing at his face in a way that Merlin was determined not to find endearing.

"Where are the curtains?" he asked, his voice slurred with sleep.

Merlin sighed loudly and flopped back down.

"It's bad enough we have no sheets," he complained. "Next she'll want the last blanket."

"I'll fight her for it," Arthur mumbled, sliding across the bare mattress to attach himself to Merlin's side. He traced the scars on Merlin's forearm, something he did often. He'd played with the scar on Merlin's head as well, until his hair had grown over it. "At least it's sunny for a change."

Merlin had to concede that one. Winter in Devonshire might indeed be warm, but it was also wet. They hadn't had sun in days and would probably be living off the tinned vegetables instead of the garden for some time yet.

"Should probably go and see if she needs help," he said eventually, as Arthur breathed softly against his skin and the rattling of the sewing machine reached his ears. Arthur grunted and Merlin wormed out of his octopus-like grip, shaking his head as Arthur just rolled back onto his own pillow, pulling the blanket up over his shoulder.

"Who's a lazy git, now?" he said without any bite, grabbing his jeans and hauling them on before digging for a clean shirt. He made sure to shut the bedroom door softly behind him.

The one corridor of their farmhouse had cracked linoleum covering the floor, and he regretted not wearing socks as the cold shocked his bare feet. Merlin walked as quickly as he could to the front room, where Gwen sat in front of the ancient, pedal-powered sewing machine, her foot moving steadily as she sewed a line across one of the missing curtains and a worn tea towel.

"Have you stolen every bit of fabric in the house yet?" he asked.

"I'm sure there's something I've missed," she said. The rooster that was always perched on the windowsill squawked, in full support of her thieving ways because she fed it from the table at mealtimes.

Merlin made to grab a chair, but Gwen spoke up. "I'm nearly finished here; could you go outside and have a look round?"

"Yeah, alright," he said, and went to grab his trainers, forgoing a coat so he could enjoy the sunshine properly. It was a bit chilly as he made for the garden gate but he figured the walk would warm him.

They had seen their first jet contrail on a sunny, blue-sky day about one week after the Event They Avoided Discussing, when Gwen was still bursting randomly into tears and Arthur would occasionally acquire that thousand-yard stare that Merlin had once read about soldiers experiencing after combat. The evidence of human life that possibly gave a shit about their existence was heartening for all of them, especially when the jets began flying overhead twice a week, doing low passes over the countryside where Infected were beginning to collapse, weakened and gasping.

The sign had been Arthur's idea and Gwen's execution, and her feverish quest to steal every sheet and bolt of fabric large enough in the whole house had kept her busy and distracted, which had in turn made her easier to live with, and the thousand-yard stares had even diminished somewhat in frequency. Three weeks later, Merlin dared admit to himself that they just might make it.

He stopped and listened carefully; beyond the chirping of birds that seemed to multiply upon itself with every week the land stayed empty of humans, he thought he could hear something. He paused. Yes, definitely the roar of a jet engine. He ran for the house and banged into the kitchen so abruptly that the rooster took off in a puff of feathers.

"It's here," he panted.

"Arthur!" Gwen shouted, jumping to her feet and breaking the threads in the sewing machine as she and Merlin wadded up the fabric.

"Come on, it's here!" Merlin shouted along with her, dragging his end of the sheet outside.

Arthur appeared on their heels as they ran past the low fence, hurriedly dressed and still cramming his trainers on as he ducked to grab a trailing bit of sheet.

The jet was coming closer but they were almost at the place where they would lay down the 20-foot-high letter O they were carrying. Merlin and Arthur spread it out in the breeze with a snap as Gwen scrambled for the large rocks they weighed the letters down with. They were good at this drill, and had the sheet secured when the plane came into view, several hundred feet overhead but close enough to see that it was military. They began to jump up and down, waving wildly, as their homemade sign cried, 'HELLO'.

 

THE END


End file.
